the Milky Way
noun
1
: a broad band of light that can be seen in the night sky and that is caused by the light of a very large number of faint stars
2
: the galaxy in which we live that contains the stars that make up the Milky Way
Examples of the Milky Way in a Sentence
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Galaxies that rotate in the opposite direction relative to the Milky Way are slightly brighter than galaxies that rotate in the same direction relative to the Milky Way.
—
David Faris, Newsweek, 17 Mar. 2025
The other half, the team believes, likely fled to the outskirts of the Milky Way after a gravitational encounter with a supermassive black hole at the heart of the LMC separated these stars from their stellar binary partners.
—Robert Lea, Space.com, 7 Mar. 2025
Scientists started to suspect that a black hole lurked in the heart of the Milky Way in the early 1960s, not long after the discovery of active galactic nuclei—extremely bright regions at the cores of some faraway galaxies illuminated by voraciously feeding supermassive black holes.
—Seth Fletcher, Scientific American, 1 Sep. 2022
The real star of the footage is the Milky Way glowing behind it.
—Amanda Kooser, Forbes, 4 Dec. 2024
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David Faris, Newsweek, 17 Mar. 2025
The other half, the team believes, likely fled to the outskirts of the Milky Way after a gravitational encounter with a supermassive black hole at the heart of the LMC separated these stars from their stellar binary partners.
—Robert Lea, Space.com, 7 Mar. 2025
Scientists started to suspect that a black hole lurked in the heart of the Milky Way in the early 1960s, not long after the discovery of active galactic nuclei—extremely bright regions at the cores of some faraway galaxies illuminated by voraciously feeding supermassive black holes.
—Seth Fletcher, Scientific American, 1 Sep. 2022
The real star of the footage is the Milky Way glowing behind it.
—Amanda Kooser, Forbes, 4 Dec. 2024
See All Example Sentences for the Milky Way
Cite this Entry
“The Milky Way.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20Milky%20Way. Accessed 2 Apr. 2025.
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