Explanation:
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.
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