More information coming soon.
1
Much of our recent ability to map the Milky Way comes from data from the European Space Agency mission Gaia. Go here to learn more about many of the discoveries made using data from Gaia:
Gaia’s decade of discoveries: unravelling the intricacies of our galaxy
2
The nature of the Outer Arm is still quite controversial among astronomers. Go here to find out more about the controversy:
3
For many decades, the Perseus arm has been thought to be a “major” spiral arm of the Galaxy, but there are mysterious gaps in the arm that astronomers struggle to explain. But there are also some beautiful remnants of supernova explosions that astronomers see including the Crab Nebula and IC 443.
4
The Orion Spur is chock-a-block with star formation regions that are favored by amateur astronomers, including the North American Nebula. Shown on our sign is a 3D current reconstruction of the Orion-Eridanus superbubble, a giant hot-bubble of gas stretching tens of light years across which contains the Orion Nebula.
5
The Local Bubble is one of many bubbles in the region surrounding the Sun. For a 3D reconstruction of all the star formation regions (labeled with their catalog numbers) and bubbles within 3000 light years of the Sun see the movie below. The image on the left shows the star forming region as you fly through the Orion Nebula, turn left to fly through the Gum Nebula, turn left again to head towards the North American Nebula and make one final turn to head home to the Sun.
6
Although big on our sky, the Big Dipper consists of stars that are extremely close. Because of this, astronomers see gradual shifts in the positions of these nearby stars compared to the distant background stars. This is called stellar “proper motion” and occurs because things that are nearby tend to cover a greater angle in time than things that are far away. See this video for the future of the Big Dipper:
Motion of stars in the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) from 4000BC to 130,000 AD
7
8
The Sagittarius-Carina Arm has some of the most spectacularly beautiful star formation regions in the Galaxy, but probably two of most famous ones, thanks to NASA James Webb Space Telescope, are the Carina Nebula and the Eagle Nebula. Click the links below for each.
9
The star formation regions of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm are relatively far away and mostly hidden behind dust, but infrared telescopes have gotten some spectacular views, like this image of G333 obtained by the European Space Agency Herschel telescope:
10
11
12
13
14
