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Posted on 05/12/2025 11:26:00 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from the side? Because we are on the inside, humanity can’t get an actual picture. Recently, however, just such a map has been made using location data for over a billion stars from ESA’s Gaia mission. The resulting featured illustration shows that just like many other spiral galaxies, our Milky Way has a very thin central disk. Our Sun and all the stars we see at night are in this disk. Although hypothesized before, perhaps more surprising is that the disk appears curved at the outer edges. The colors of our Galaxy's warped central band derive mostly from dark dust, bright blue stars, and red emission nebulas. Although data analysis is ongoing, Gaia was deactivated in March after a successful mission.
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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.
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I was taught and always believed our Solar System was at the edge in some spiral.
I would like to see a side view.
Correct.
Well, I was sorta correct. Thanks for the graphic.
I see we aren’t too far from the Cinnabon concession.
Could be worse
Looks something like the Sombrero Galaxy, pretty good lookin!
Me too. That was based on the best data they had at the time. The instrumentation has improved a lot since then.
“I was taught and always believed our Solar System was at the edge in some spiral.”
And that location is thought to be critical for the existence of life as we know it - too close to the galactic center or heavily-populated parts of the spiral arms and the number of destructive nearby supernovae is so high that no higher forms of life ever have a chance to evolve; too close to the lightly-populated edges of the spiral arms and there are not enough supernovae to form the heavy elements needed for advanced life forms.
So not only is Earth in the “Goldilocks Zone” of our solar system, but that solar system is in the “Goldilocks Zone” of our galaxy.
Me too. What gives?
Okay, now THAT’S funny, I don’t care who ya are. :-)
Now, that’s a good one! I almost choked on my Gatorade ...
Alternative title: Astronomers give Milky Way galaxy the side eye.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
It’s beautiful!
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