People living in the southern hemisphere have an enviable view of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which appears as a distinctive bright streak across the sky. This is because the orientation of the Solar System means that as the Earth orbits the Sun, the southern hemisphere continually looks out towards the centre of the Milky Way and the northern hemisphere out towards the universe beyond.
The Milky Way gets its name from a Greek myth about the goddess Hera, whose breast milk was spilt across the sky. In China it is called the ‘Silver River’, and its Sanskrit name in India translates as the ‘Ganges in the Sky’. It always amazes me that when we look up at the stars and galaxies in the night sky we are looking back in time, but not as far back in time as the ice age (21 Down). Looking with our unaided eyes we can see individual stars only as far away as around a thousand parsecs (20 Down), or 4000 light years. To see further back in time, we need to use telescopes.
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