Viewing the Milky Way

[astromackem]

Question to you sages on here:

About the classic images of the Milky Way that people take photos of out in dark sky areas- the ones that look like massive clouds of gas. What are we actually seeing here? One of the spiral "arms" of our galaxy stretching away from us?

Thanks

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

We are looking into the disk of the galaxy, with dust bands obscuring parts. As we are in a disk of stars, looking at right angles to the disk, we are looking into a region of stars "only" a few thousand light years thick, and because it is fairly sparse, we look straight through the layer.. Looking into the plane of the disk, we are looking into a similarly dense, but MUCH thicker layer, of stars, gas and dust, hence the difference in brightness

[davefrance]

This might help

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way#/media/File:ESO_-_The_Milky_Way_panorama_(by).jpg

[brantuk]

If you look towards Sagittarius you're looking towards the center of the milky way.