The Milky Way galaxy has a whopping circumference of roughly 250-300 thousand light years. Within its main body, there are around 400 billion stars. It is believed that the Earth's solar system exists very close to the galaxy's galactic plane. Due to this fact only, the night sky appears to be divided into two virtually equal hemispheres. At the centre of our Milky Way is believed to be a gigantic black hole. Scientists have firm evidence that this huge sized black hole has swallowed adequate gas and dust to equal the mass of more than two million suns. But researchers still do not know how the black hole works and where all the matter and energy is lost, when it is sucked inwards. The Milky Way's black hole is called Sagittarius and is thought to have between 3.2 to 4 million times the mass of our sun. SGR rotates making a full revolution at about every 11 minutes.

Myths and legends grew up in different cultures around this mysterious apparition in the heavens. Each culture explained this band of light in the sky according to its own beliefs. To the ancient Armenians, it was straw strewn across the sky by the god Pahang. In eastern Asia, it was the Silvery River of Heaven. The Finns and Estonians saw it as the path of the Birds.

Meanwhile, because ancient Greek and Roman legends and myths came to dominate western culture, it was their interpretations that were passed down to a majority of languages. Both the Greeks and the Romans saw the starry band as a river of milk.