The Milky Way rising in the southwest sky above Colorado fall foliage of aspen trees in the middle of the Rocky Mountains Sangre de Cristo Wilderness and Sawatch range. Portrait view. The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name "milky" is derived from its appearance as a dim 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 Greek "milky circle. From the Earth, the Milky Way appears like a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within the Galaxy. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. In the past, astronomers thought that all of the stars in the universe were contained inside of the Milky Way. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble definitively showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. Colorado Fine art nature landscape photography images by James Bo Insogna (C) - All Rights Reserved. *PLEASE NOTE, WATERMARKS WILL NOT BE ON THE PURCHASE PRINTS*