Head away from city lights in late August to see the dense core of the Milky Way arcing towards the southwestern horizon against a blissfully dark sky as the waning lunar disk approaches its new moon phase.
Our solar system orbits within a 100,000-light-year-wide spiral galaxy known as the Milky Way. On clear nights under dark skies, we can see the profile of our galactic home from within — the galactic plane — stretching across the inky darkness as a glowing band of milky light interspersed with dense filaments of cosmic clouds.
