A woman poses for a selfie on a bridge decorated with lanterns at a public park in Beijing on the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday, Sunday, January 22, 2023. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)
People take part in mass water fights during the first day of Songkran, or Thai New Year, on Khao San Road in Bangkok on April 13, 2023. (Photo by Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP Phoot)
A pelican on a lake in California in the first decade of January 2024 deftly snares a large trout after scooping it up, tossing it into the air and catching it in its bill. (Photo by Jiahong Zeng/Solent news)
American model and socialite Hailey Bieber in the first decade of August 2025 rolls solo onto a flight with bags of fries and other treats from In-N-Out Burger. (Photo by Hailey Bieber/Instagram)
Denver Broncos cheerleaders perform during the first half of a preseason NFL football game between the Denver Broncos and the Arizona Cardinals, Saturday, August 16, 2025, in Denver. (Photo by David Zalubowski/AP Photo)
Russian model and television personality Irina Shayk teases her appearance in the Savage X Fenty show in the first decade of November 2022. (Photo by irinashayk/Instagram)
A female body builder prepares backstage to participate in the first national Miss Saraighat Body Building Championship in Gauhati, northeastern Assam state, India, Saturday, April 2, 2022. (Photo by Anupam Nath/AP Photo)
The Milky Way is the galaxy in which Earth is contained. This name derives from its appearance as a dim “milky” glowing band arching across the night sky, in which the naked eye cannot distinguish individual stars. The term “Milky Way” is a translation of the Classical Latin via lactea, from the Hellenistic Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος (pr. galaxías kýklos, “milky circle”). The Milky Way appears like a band because it is a disk-shaped structure being viewed from inside. The fact that this faint band of light is made up of stars was proven in 1610 when Galileo Galilei used his telescope to resolve it into individual stars. In the 1920s, observations by astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.