What is the official scientific name of our galaxy?

What is the actual name for our galaxy? Is it just the Milky Way or does it have a different name? For example, Earth's other name is Terra, our moon's name is Luna, and our sun is called Sol.


And for that matter, what's the name of the spiral arm our solar system is located in?

What is the official scientific name of our galaxy?
The official name of our galaxy is the Milky Way.





BTW, you are incorrect. Earth's only name is Earth. The Moon's only name is The Moon, and The Sun's only other name is The Sun. Terra, Luna and Sol are Latin names for those bodies, but are not accepted as their official names.
Reply:Nope, that's the name.





The name Milky Way refers to the milky patch of sky which rings the Earth. You may have seen it if you live outside of a big city, it looks almost like very tenuous clouds to the naked eye. It was named in prehistory before anyone really knew what it was, so just called the "Milky Way" for its appearance. It wasn't until Gallileo looked at an area of it with his telescope in the 1600s that it was realised that the Milky Way was made up of thousands of individual stars, and it was even later that it was realised that what we are looking at is an edge on view of our own galaxy, one of billions in the universe.





An interesting fact related to this is that the word galaxy actually comes from the Greek word, galactos for milk! The Latin version of Milky Way is Via Lactea, with "Via" meaning "Way" or "Road" and "Lactea" meaning "Milk".





http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/questio...





The Sun (and therefore the Earth and Solar System) may be found close to the inner rim of the Galaxy's Orion Arm, in the Local Fluff or the Gould Belt, at a hypothesized distance of 7.62卤0.32 kpc from the Galactic Center. The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Perseus Arm, is about 6,500 light-years. The Sun, and thus the Solar System, is found in what scientists call the galactic habitable zone.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way#S...
Reply:the milky way.





we are in the orion arm.