The Sun is a member of a system of stars known as the Galaxy. The system is popularly called the Milky Way, but this name is more properly restricted to the luminous band stretching across the sky. The name is the translation of the Latin Via Lactea; the Greek name was ‘Galaxies’.

The Milky Way has been known since very ancient times – on a dark, clear night it cannot be overlooked – and there are many legends about it. In Chinese tales there are two lovers, Chuc Nu and Nguu Lang, at the court of the Jade Emperor, who neglected their official duties and were banished to the sky as the stars Vega and Altair, on opposite sides of the Milky Way river. They are allowed to meet once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, when flocks of birds form a bridge across the river to enable the lovers to cross. In Finland, birds are again involved; it was thought that migratory birds used the Milky Way as a guideline to their home, Lintukoto – and there may be some truth in this! To the people of the Kalahari Desert the Milky Way was due to embers from a fire lit by a girl who wanted to find her way around on a starless night. The Aborigines of South Australia had a different idea; the Milky Way was Woodlipari, a celestial river where there are caves in which live dangerous creatures called yura (the caves themselves are yurakauwe, ‘homes of monsters’).