Events

Join the NASA Night Sky Network on Wednesday, October 22, at 6:00 PM Pacific Time (9:00 PM Eastern), along with Shane Larson, where we’ll discuss the discovery of the Milky Way, how our perceptions of it constantly shape and change our understanding of other galaxies, and the Cosmos on much larger scales.

For most of human history, we have been aware of the Milky Way, but it is comparatively recent that we have come to understand the Milky Way is our parent galaxy, a vast swirling storm of stars 10 billion years in the making. The story of how we came to understand our home galaxy is one of the central threads in the story of how we have come to understand the Universe far beyond. Historically, our ideas about the nature and structure of the Cosmos have grown out of our attempts to understand the Milky Way. For hundreds of years, we didn't know what the Milky Way was, or even that there were other galaxies besides the Milky Way. There are still some secrets the galaxy hides from us, providing astronomers with puzzles and challenges to work on for many years to come.

Night Sky Network
https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov

Astronomical Society of the Pacific
https://astrosociety.org