Two one-year old baby mountain gorillas play together in the forest of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwestern Uganda on Saturday, April 3, 2021. (Photo by AP Photo/Stringer)
A student poses with her painted face, ahead of New Year celebrations at a college in Chennai on December 28, 2024. (Photo by R. Satish Babu/AFP Photo)
The Indiana Pacemates perform during an NBA game between the Indiana Pacers and the Cleveland Cavaliers at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on January 14, 2025. (Photo by USA Today)
In this September 9, 2018 photo, a diver holds onto his catch of lobsters during a fishing journey in the Miskito coast near Cay Savannah, Honduras. A diver makes 75 lempiras ($3) per pound of lobster. An average 10-pound daily haul of lobster is a windfall for people in one of the most impoverished regions of the Americas, so many take the risk, and many suffer for it. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)
Swans from the state Ballet of Georgia production of Swan Lake arrive in London on August 27, 2024 ahead of opening night at London Coliseum venue on 28th August. (Photo by Guy Corbishley/Alamy Live News)
A trio poses for a photo in front of the art installation Surrender (Flag) by John Gerrard of Ireland displayed in a courtyard of the Palacio de San Francisco, as part of the first art biennial in Bogota, Colombia, Tuesday, September 23, 2025. (Photo by Fernando Vergara/AP Photo)
A woman and her son hold firecrackers during Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, in Mumbai, India, November 4, 2021. (Photo by Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters)
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.