On Cosmos (the original), Carl Sagan goes through a lot of the names for the part of the galactic spiral that we see at night in places without light pollution. A lot of them revolved around milk, but one that really stuck in my mind was ‘the backbone of the night.’ I think it might have been from an Aboriginal Australian culture, but it’s been so long I couldn’t say for sure.
On Cosmos (the original), Carl Sagan goes through a lot of the names for the part of the galactic spiral that we see at night in places without light pollution. A lot of them revolved around milk, but one that really stuck in my mind was ‘the backbone of the night.’ I think it might have been from an Aboriginal Australian culture, but it’s been so long I couldn’t say for sure.
Fun fact: the word “galaxy” has the root of “milk” in it. It’s dairy all the way down.
Galactic / lactic
The good old milky milk.