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Many European languages have borrowed, directly or indirectly, the Greek name for the Milky Way, including English and Latin. Road to Santiago. The Milky Way was traditionally used as a guide by pilgrims traveling to the holy site at Compostela, hence the use of "The Road to Santiago" as a name for the Milky Way.
In Western culture, the name "Milky Way" is derived from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky. The term is a translation of the Classical Latin via lactea, in turn derived from the Hellenistic Greek γαλαξίας, short for γαλαξίας κύκλος (galaxías kýklos), meaning "milky circle".
Many star names are, in origin, descriptive of the part in the constellation they are found in; thus Phecda, a corruption of Arabic فخذ الدب ( fakhdh ad-dubb, 'thigh of the bear'). Only a handful of the brightest stars have individual proper names not depending on their asterism; so Sirius ('the scorcher'), Antares ('rival of Ares ', i.e ...
These are globular clusters within the halo of the Milky Way galaxy. The diameter is in minutes of arc as seen from Earth. For reference, the J2000 epoch celestial coordinates of the Galactic Center are right ascension 17h 45m 40.04s, declination −29° 00′ 28.1″. A high proportion of globular clusters are located in the Ophiuchus and ...
The Milky Way has several smaller galaxies gravitationally bound to it, as part of the Milky Way subgroup, which is part of the local galaxy cluster, the Local Group.. There are 61 small galaxies confirmed to be within 420 kiloparsecs (1.4 million light-years) of the Milky Way, but not all of them are necessarily in orbit, and some may themselves be in orbit of other satellite galaxies.
This is a list of stellar streams. A stellar stream is an association of stars orbiting a galaxy. It was once a globular cluster or dwarf galaxy that has now been torn apart and stretched out along its orbit by tidal forces. [1] An exception in the list about Milky Way streams given below is the Magellanic Stream, composed of gas (mostly ...
It contains Ursa Major and the Hyades star cluster, among others. The Local Bubble also contains the neighboring G-Cloud, which contains the stars Alpha Centauri and Altair. In the galactic context, the Local Bubble is a small part of the Orion Arm, which contains most stars that we can see without a telescope.
This is a list of open clusters located in the Milky Way. An open cluster is an association of up to a few thousand stars that all formed from the same giant molecular cloud. There are over 1,000 known open clusters in the Milky Way galaxy, but the actual total may be up to ten times higher. [1] The estimated half-lives of clusters, after which ...