| Library / English Dictionary |
MILKY WAY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The galaxy containing the solar system; consists of millions of stars that can be seen as a diffuse band of light stretching across the night sky
Synonyms:
Milky Way; Milky Way Galaxy; Milky Way System
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)
Hypernyms ("Milky Way" is a kind of...):
extragalactic nebula; galaxy ((astronomy) a collection of star systems; any of the billions of systems each having many stars and nebulae and dust)
Meronyms (parts of "Milky Way"):
heliosphere (the region inside the heliopause containing the sun and solar system)
Meronyms (members of "Milky Way"):
Crux; Crux Australis; Southern Cross (a small conspicuous constellation in the southern hemisphere in the Milky Way near Centaurus)
Context examples:
Astronomers using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, have found a cluster of stars forming at the very edge of our Milky Way galaxy.
(Stars Found Far from Galaxy Center, JPL/NASA)
Captured here by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), this big galaxy is thought to be up to 15 percent larger in diameter than the Milky Way.
(A Galaxy on the Edge, ESO)
The Milky Way galaxy is estimated to contain 100 million stellar black holes—cosmic bodies formed by the collapse of massive stars and so dense even light can't escape.
(Unpredicted stellar black hole discovered by astronomers, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
It appears that large volumes of gas flow from smaller galaxies to larger ones, like the Milky Way.
(Half Our Body's Atoms Could Have Come from Outside The Galaxy, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered surprising new clues about a hefty, rapidly aging star whose behavior has never been seen before in our Milky Way galaxy.
(Hubble Observes One-of-a-Kind Star Nicknamed 'Nasty', NASA)
The galaxy is as large as our Milky Way, but it had escaped attention because it contains only 1/200th the number of stars.
(Dark Matter Goes Missing in Oddball Galaxy, NASA)
He recovered the axe in the midst of the Milky Way of checks, starched shirts, and manuscripts, and prepared, when he came down, to kill Joe.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Many open questions remain about how galaxies merge and what will happen when the Milky Way approaches Andromeda, the nearby galaxy that will collide with ours in about 4 billion years.
(Listening for Gravitational Waves Using Pulsars, NASA)
Our Milky Way Galaxy is littered with these stellar relics, called planetary nebulae.
(Hubble Views a Colorful Demise of a Sun-like Star, NASA)
Using planetary evolution models, the team was able to show that Kepler-51 b, the planet closest to the star, will one day (in a billion years) look like a smaller and hotter version of Neptune, a type of planet that is fairly common throughout the Milky Way.
('Cotton Candy' Planet Mysteries Unravel in New Hubble Observations, NASA)
