Why is the "Milky Way" called that way?

Answer 1

Because our Galaxy has a very unique layer of stars at the edge. It is a big conglomeration of stars that look like a white line and sometimes when you look carefully at the night sky, when there isn't any light source and moon you can see this White Belt or stars called the Milky Way, like the chocolate :) :) :)

Answer 2

As the previous answerer said, it looks milky in a dark enough sky. Someday in your life, you should make a point to find a very dark area of the country and just spend a night outside. Might I recommend an astronomy village right outside of Chiefland, Florida (if you are in the states). You can stop there on your way to Disney World. It is a very neat thing to see. Pictures don't do it justice. Please click on the link below for a picture of the Milky Way, our galaxy. I've seen better, but I got tired of looking.

The second link is for the Chiefland Astronomy Village. They are a pretty friendly bunch of owners and they LOVE astronomy. I had some great experiences there. Highly recommended.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Because if you're out in the middle of nowhere where background light doesn't drown it all out, at night it looks like a belt of white around the middle of the sky, like somebody spilled a trail of milk across the night.

(It's because the whole galaxy is basically flat, and you're seeing 100 billion stars edge on)

Answer 4

Comes from the Greeks, who thought that they were looking at the milk of Hera, (Zeus's wife).