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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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

Explanation: What does our 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 mission. The resulting shows that just like , our Milky Way has a very thin central disk. and all the stars we see at night are in this disk. Although , perhaps is that the disk appears curved at the outer edges. The colors of our Galaxy's central band derive mostly from dark , , and . Although data analysis is ongoing, in March after a successful mission.

Authors & editors: () & ()
NASA Official: Amber Straughn .
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