Abstract
On a clear, moonless night, we can look up and see a hazy, faintly luminous band of light that stretches across the sky from one horizon to the other; it is known as the Milky Way. According to ancient Greek myth, the goddess Hera, Queen of Heaven, spilled milk from her breast into the sky. The Romans called the spilt milk the Via Lactea, or the “Milky Way.” It also is designated as our Galaxy, derived from the Greek word galakt- for “milk,” the celestial milk from Hera’s breast.
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© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Lang, K. (2013). A Larger, Expanding Universe. In: Essential Astrophysics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35963-7_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35963-7_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-35962-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-35963-7
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