The Milky Road

Inspired during a visit to Fort Davis, Texas, home of McDonald Observatory and dark
night skies, photographer Larry Landolfi created this tantalizing fantasy view. The
composited image suggests the Milky Way is a heavenly extension of a deserted country
road. Of course, the name for our galaxy, the Milky Way (in Latin, Via Lactea), does
refer to its appearance as a milky band or path in the sky. In fact, the word galaxy
itself derives from the Greek for milk. Visible on moonless nights from dark sky areas,
though not so colorful as in this image, the glowing celestial band is due to the
collective light of myriad stars along the plane of our galaxy, too faint to be
distinguished individually. The diffuse starlight is cut by dark swaths of obscuring
galactic dust clouds. At the beginning of the 17th century, Galileo turned his telescope
on the Milky Way and announced it to be composed of innumerable stars.

>