How much do you know about our galaxy? Why is it called the Milky Way? Read this article and learn more about it!

The Milky Way gets its name from the Greek myth. In one myth there is a story of the goddess Hera, she sprayed the milk across the sky, and it created our galaxy. Of course, there are some places where our galaxy is called by other names. For example, in Korea it’s called the “Dragon’s River”, in Chine it’s called the “Silver River”, and in the Kalahari Desert it’s called “Backbone of Night”. Every culture finds a way how to personalize our galaxy.

Did you know that the Milky way is only a medium-size galaxy compared to others? There are galaxies with more than 100 trillion stars, while the Milky Way has only about 200 billion.

Another interesting fact is that our galaxy was made from other galaxies. The Milky Way consumed different galaxies during the time to create its shape and size. And this is not it! Now it is absorbing the Canis Major Dwarf galaxy and some other small galaxy.

According to ESA, the Milky Way disk is not flat, it is warped. Astronomers think that this may be the result of a past collision with another galaxy. But we can feel special because the Milky Way galaxy is very rare to find in the universe. It is because our galaxy is bright, nearby satellite galaxies and in the universe, there is only four percent of similar galaxies with brig, nearby satellites.