Universe and Outer space

Aakash Ganga is the other name given to our galaxy – The Milky Way. I have always wondered why the ancient astronomers have given it such a funny name. I found the reason recently while I was reading an encyclopedia about space. On a clear night, you can see a dense band of stars that stretches across the sky. Our ancient astronomers thought this resembled a trail of spilled milk. So that’s how it got this funny name…

Now that we know how Milky Way got its name, let’s take a tour of this spectacular galaxy. We, the Earthlings lie about 25,000 light years from the centre of the galaxy which means it will take us a whopping 25,000 years to reach the centre even if we travel at the speed of light (With the present technology, we can’t even imagine to travel that far). The Galaxy stretches 100,000 light years across. As we move towards the centre of the galaxy, we can find that it becomes denser than the spiral arms. Unlike at the spiral arms, where you find mainly hot, young, blue stars, towards the galactic center we can find a number of older red and yellow stars. Also, you can clearly see that the inner stars are traveling much faster than the outer ones.