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- The Milky Way arches across this 360-degree panorama of the night sky above the Paranal platform, home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope.
- This infrared image is from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
- The Milky Way is unusual, with a "definitive bar feature - some 27,000 light years in length - that distinguishes it from pedestrian spiral galaxies."
- The identification of Jacob’s Ladder with the Milky Way was especially prevalent in the medieval church.
- According to Greek myth, the Milky Way was created by the goddess Hera spurting her breast milk into the cosmos.
- In Egyptian mythology, the goddess Nut is said to swallow the sun at the vernal equinox and to give birth to it again nine months later at the winter solstice.
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The Milky Way arches across this 360-degree panorama of the night sky above the Paranal platform, home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Credit: Maedin/ESO












