New Map of Milky Way Galaxy

“Scientific American” magazine (April 2020) carries a technical paper with the results of a multi-year analysis of thousands of telescope observations in optical and radio wave spectra and direct measurement of the distance to hundreds of reference stars. It provides the best estimate yet of how our home galaxy would look from the outside.

Previous maps, based on much less data and fewer observations, looked like the one below from a NASA textbook. There is a dense central “bar” but only two diffuse spiral arms that don’t wrap all the way around the galaxy. Our galaxy got an upgrade.