Sunday, 21 February 2010

Why do pictures of the Milky Way look like a spiral?

Just to clarify a concept here: there are no pictures of the Milky Way other than the ones taken from within the Solar system, and they all look somewhat like this:



enter image description here



Everything else you see are artists' depictions of the Milky Way based on the latest research. This is the currently most accepted shape:



enter image description here



i.e.: a spiral galaxy with four main arms.



There is an ongoing discussion about whether our Galaxy is made up of four arms or just two. See for example: Vallée (2014), which sadly is not available online :(

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