Stepping Way Back from how our World is seen: Our Galaxy from the outside on the side (APOD)

[SorellaLaBefana]

How does does our Milky Way Galaxy look from outside our little island universe?

...Because we are on the inside, humanity can’t get an actual picture...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...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250512.html

Yes, that snappy curve to the disk does make our galaxy look quite jaunty!

The ESA Gaia program launched in 2013, to study the 3D structure of the Milky Way. The collection of data ended this year on 15 January. Takes a long time to process the data which is being released in groups. The first release was in 2016, the last won't be out until 2030.

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/Farewell_Gaia!_Spacecraft_operations_come_to_an_end

[dweller]

1. 🙃

~



✌🏻

[Easterncedar]

2. That curve is quite snappy!