The home of our Solar System is known as the Milky Way. It is a barred spiral galaxy made from a huge collection of stars, dust and gas. When viewed from earth, the Milky Way appears in the night sky as a diffuse band of light. The billions of stars that form the galaxy seem to melt together to form a hazy glow.  Around 2,500 years ago, a Greek thinker named Democritus was the first to suggest that the Milky Way is made up of individual stars. Fast forward to the 17th century, and Galileo Galilei used his telescope to confirm this idea. He showed that the bright band we see in the night sky isn't just a blur but a...

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