This prompts me to ask a question that occasionally springs to my mind. I just saw an astronomy presentation, and one image among the photos was of the Milky Way galaxy, with an arrow indicating the Earth's position in it.
The context of this image suggested that it, too, was a photograph. However, how can that possibly be the case if only a couple of manmade objects have even made it outside the bounds of our solar system? Is what I saw merely an artist's conception that wasn't identified as such? I'm sure this will seem like a stupid question to some, but it's just one of those things I've never had the opportunity to ask anyone about. If it is actually a photo, then how was the image captured?
They got the pic from a postcard from an alien...