The Milky Way

Greeks called this cloudy, whitish circle the ga cos cuclos. Some ancient philosophers suggested it might be made out of stars. This isn't obvious ecause it doesn't look like stars. It looks like a diffused glow. But when galileo turn his telescope on it, he discovered that the philosophers who said it was stars were right. And since way is another word for road in english, we call the via lactia, or milky road, the milky way.