Milky Way

galaxy containing our Solar System

10 dated entries naming Milky Way, drawn from 10 separate years between 385 BCE and 2022 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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4th century BC

385 BCEDemocritus announces that the Milky Way is composed of many stars.source

12th century

1181Chinese and Japanese astronomers observe what has come to be understood as supernova SN 1181. One of only eight supernovae in the Milky Way observed in recorded history. It appears in the constellation Cassiopeia and is visible in the night sky for about 185 days. The radio source 3C58 was thought to be the remnant from this event, but opinion is shifting towards the recently discovered nebula Pa 30 (ref : Arxiv 2105.12384).source

17th century

1604October 9 – Kepler's Supernova (SN 1604) is first observed from the northern parts of the Italian Peninsula. Beginning on October 17, Johannes Kepler begins a year's observation of it from Prague. There won't be another supernova visible to the "naked-eye" until 1987. , this is the last supernova to be observed in the Milky Way.source

18th century

1752February 23 – Messier 83 (M83), the "Southern Pinwheel Galaxy" and the first to be cataloged outside the "Local Group" of galaxies nearest to Earth's galaxy, the Milky Way, is discovered by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille. Lacaille, who observes M83 during a research voyage in the Southern Hemisphere, is the first to identify the body as a nebulous object rather than a star. M83, 15 million light-years away, is the most distant object to be identified up to that time.source

19th century

1885August 19 – S Andromedae, the only supernova seen in the Andromeda Galaxy so far by astronomers, and the first ever noted outside the Milky Way, is discovered.source

20th century

1924December 30 – American astronomer Edwin Hubble announces that Andromeda, previously believed to be a nebula, is actually another galaxy, and that the Milky Way is only one of many such galaxies in the universe.source
1933May 5 – The detection by Karl Jansky of radio waves from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is reported in The New York Times. The discovery leads to the birth of radio astronomy.source

21st century

2009March 7 – NASA's Kepler Mission, a space photometer that will search for extrasolar planets in the Milky Way galaxy, is launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, USA.source
2020April 28 – A fast radio burst is detected from the Magnetar SGR 1935+2154, the first ever detected inside the Milky Way, and the first to be linked to a known source.source
2022May 12 – The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration reveals its first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.source