The late summer sky is adorned with the sky’s most mysteriously beautiful sight. The glorious Milky Way, a glowing river of light, dominates the night.
During late August and all of September’s early evenings, the silvery band rises high in the sky as it extends from the southeast to the northwest.
It flows across the heavens like a stream of glowing milk. It stretches across the vault of heaven like, as some would have it, the night’s backbone.
Up to about 400 years ago, the Milky Way’s composition was a mystery.
You’ll need a dark, rural sky to see its complex beauty. The growth of city lighting has seen to that.
When it comes to the nighttime sky, our ancient ancestors had an advantage that one of our technological advances has sadly wiped away. Their skies were unblemished by the stain of urban light pollution. They saw the Milky Way in all of its complex, mind-altering glory.
However, the question of its composition and the mystery of its origin endured for millennia. Over the next few weeks, I propose to trace the history of our slowly rising knowledge of its true nature. I hope you will come along for the ride along the milky road.
Our odyssey begins with the myths and legends that people told long ago. They explained — or explained away — many natural mysteries by the capricious nature of their gods or by their concerns about their culture’s survival or prosperity.
Many cultures around the world tell such stories about the Milky Way. Ancient Egyptians saw the silvery stream as the loving gift of the god Isis, who spread abundant, life-sustaining wheat across the sky.
The Incas, who loved the beauty and wealth that gold produces, saw it as a torrent of gold dust.
The Inuit of the Arctic and Subarctic North saw it as a band of snow. The first people of Australia saw the ash of the campfires set against the night’s cold and dark.
Often, ancient people imagined their rivers and great waters and the creatures living in them. The Arabs living in arid deserts saw an abundant river of life-sustaining water.
The Native Americans living near the Great Lakes saw a muddy brook stirred up by a giant mud turtle crawling slowly across the heavens. Polynesians thought of the Milky Way as a cloud-eating shark.
Anglers in the Orient imagined a school of fish frightened away by a fishhook represented by the thin, crescent moon.
Most often, ancient cultures saw it as a road or path, quite literally a “way.” “Milky Way” is an interpretation of the Latin “Via Lactea,” a milky road. The Romans seem to have borrowed that designation from the Greeks, who called the milky river of light Galaxia, i.e., the “milky circle.” The latter name is apt. Observed over an entire year, the Milky Way forms a circle around the sky.
To some early Hindus of India, it was the path of their god Aryaman as he traveled upward to his heavenly throne. To those who lived on the banks of the Yellow River in China, it was a yellow road — their life-sustaining river extended into the heavens.
The Celtic denizens of Wales saw it as the path that the sly trickster and warrior Gwydion left as he pursued his fleeing wife. In Norse mythology, the Milky Way is the road to Valhalla, the final home of brave warriors who died in battle.
The Iroquois described it as the path to eternal life after death, the “Road of Souls.” To travelers seeking the center of civilization of its time, it was the “Road to Rome.”
Ovid, perhaps the greatest of all Roman poets, describes it as the shining road to Olympus and from there to the palace of Zeus, the king of all the gods: “By this way,” he wrote, “the gods fare to the halls and royal dwelling of the mighty Thunderer.”
According to first-century BCE writer Pseudo-Eratosthenes, early Greeks named the Milky Way Galaxia, a “milky circle.” Those readers who have observed the sky over an entire year will attest that the winter and summer Milky Way complete a circle across the sky.
Next week: A Greek myth suggesting that the Milky Way is composed of literal milk.
Tom Burns is the former director of the Perkins Observatory in Delaware.
