File:Top-down view of the Milky Way ESA25373089.jpg
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Captions
Captions
No spacecraft can travel beyond our galaxy, so it is impossible to take pictures of the Milky Way from the outside. Instead, we can rely on accurate measurements made by ESA’s Gaia mission of the positions and motions of many of our galaxy’s stars.
Summary[edit]
| Description |
English: No spacecraft can travel beyond our galaxy, so it is impossible to take pictures of the Milky Way from the outside. Instead, we can rely on accurate measurements made by ESA’s Gaia mission of the positions and motions of many of our galaxy’s stars. Using computers to model Gaia’s data, scientists can construct different views of our cosmic home. In this image we see the Milky Way as if we were hovering above it. We can admire our galaxy’s grand spiral structure in its stunning beauty and clearly identify the different parts; a central glowing bar with several spiraling arms around it. The Sun sits in the outskirts of the immense spiral, at 26 600 light-years (8200 parsec) from the centre, towards the bottom in this image. Annotations give the names and mark the locations of the spiral arms. |
| Date | 19 December 2023 (upload date) |
| Source | Top-down view of the Milky Way |
| Author | European Space Agency |
| Other versions |
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| Activity | Space Science |
| Mission | Gaia |
Licensing[edit]
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This media was created by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Where expressly so stated, images or videos are covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) licence, ESA being an Intergovernmental Organisation (IGO), as defined by the CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO licence. The user is allowed under the terms and conditions of the CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO license to Reproduce, Distribute and Publicly Perform the ESA images and videos released under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO licence and the Adaptations thereof, without further explicit permission being necessary, for as long as the user complies with the conditions and restrictions set forth in the CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO licence, these including that:
See the ESA Creative Commons copyright notice for complete information, and this article for additional details.
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   This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO license. Attribution: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar, CC BY-SA 4.0 IGO, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
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| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| current | 06:00, 20 December 2023 | | 4,000 × 4,000 (3.18 MB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2023/12/top-down_view_of_the_milky_way_annotated/25373033-2-eng-GB/Top-down_view_of_the_Milky_Way_annotated.jpg via Commons:Spacemedia |
| 06:00, 20 December 2023 |  | 4,000 × 4,000 (3.09 MB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2023/12/top-down_view_of_the_milky_way/25373078-1-eng-GB/Top-down_view_of_the_Milky_Way.jpg via Commons:Spacemedia |
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