• Question: hi my name id flo and this question has benn bugging me for ages so are there any other galaxy's with a name like the milky-way ?

    Asked by amazing person called flo to Helen on 21 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 21 Nov 2014:

      Yes, definitely! Some of the closest galaxies to us are called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and Andromeda. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way because of its milky/cloudy/fuzzy appearance in the sky. We’re on the edge in one of the spiral arms, and so what we’re seeing is the rest of the galaxy – all of those billions of stars, all that gas and dust. If you go somewhere very, very dark you can even trace out darker patches – these are what we call dust lanes.
      I think even the name galaxy comes from the word ‘milky’, maybe that’s how they named galaxy bars, because they’re ‘milk’ chocolate?!

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