Milky Way
the spiral galaxy containing our solar system. With the naked eye it is observed as a faint luminous band stretching across the heavens, composed of approximately a trillion stars, most of which are too distant to be seen individually.
Origin of Milky Way
1Words Nearby Milky Way
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use Milky Way in a sentence
Models from the 1960s and ’70s predicted that most Milky Way halo stars should have formed in place.
New research shows early galaxies were much bigger—some 10 times the mass of the Milky Way—than astronomers expected.
Some of the First Galaxies Were Big Babies | Matthew R. Francis | September 14, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTAstronomers recently placed the Milky Way on the fringe of a huge supercluster.
Laniakea: The Milky Way’s Place in the Heavens | Matthew R. Francis | September 7, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTFor example, based on the ages of stars, we know the Milky Way is about 13.2 billion years old.
One magnetar is only about a light-year from the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Most stars in the Milky Way have humdrum lives, tracing slow predictable orbits around the galactic center.
The Hypervelocity Star That’s Being Booted from the Galaxy | Matthew R. Francis | May 11, 2014 | THE DAILY BEAST"No," said the Twins, "but there are no cats in the Milky Way," and they pulled the cat's tail thoughtfully.
Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II | Rudyard Kipling"Her face was like the Milky Way," &c.—Where is the subjoined quotation taken from, and what is the context?
The Milky Way was a kind of Paradise of souls; whilst the sun was the centre of the whole creation.
The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont | Louis de RougemontIt is the Galaxy, the Milky Way, composed of millions on millions of suns!
Astronomy for Amateurs | Camille FlammarionMy brain got running on figures till the dark seemed to be all sown with dollar-marks, like the stars in the Milky Way.
A Traveler from Altruria: Romance | William Dean Howells
British Dictionary definitions for Milky Way
the diffuse band of light stretching across the night sky that consists of millions of faint stars, nebulae, etc, within our Galaxy
another name for the Galaxy
Origin of Milky Way
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for Milky Way
[ mĭl′kē ]
The spiral galaxy that contains our solar system. Made up of an estimated two hundred billion stars or more, it is seen from Earth as an irregular band of hazy light across the night sky. The solar system is located in one of the revolving spiral arms, about 50 light-years north of the galactic plane and some 27,700 light-years from the galaxy's center, which lies in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It takes approximately 250 million years for the solar system to orbit the galactic center, which is believed to contain a massive black hole. The Milky Way measures about 100,000 light-years in diameter and is the second largest galaxy, after the Andromeda Galaxy, in the cluster known as the Local Group. See also spiral galaxy.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Cultural definitions for Milky Way
Notes for Milky Way
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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