From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within.
Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610.
Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe.
Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and
Heber Curtis,observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.
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