Explanation:
Inspired by the night skies of planet Earth
in the International
Year of Astronomy,
photographer Larry Landolfi created this
tantalizing
fantasy view.
The composited image
suggests a luminous Milky Way is the heavenly extension of a 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 bright or 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.
Four hundred years ago, Galileo turned his
telescope on the Milky Way and announced it to be
"... a congeries of
innumerable
stars ..."
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