APOD - Gaia Reconstructs a Side View of our Galaxy
Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2025 May 12 Gaia Reconstructs a Side View of our Galaxy Illustration Credit : ESA , Gaia , DPAC , Stefan Payne-Wardenaar 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 Gala...
