The Summer Milky Way

The Milky Way is a band of stars, nebulae and dust. Our sun lies in the Orion arm of our spiral shaped galaxy When we gaze at this band we are looking into the depths of these arms laden with millions of stars. To the unaided eye it does appear as a hazy band but with binoculars thousands of stars come into view. A telescope reveals more stars even deeper into the galaxy. If you clicked on the "galaxy" link above you saw the earth close to the inner side of the Orion Arm. If we look toward the center of the galaxy we are looking straight through the Sagittarius Arm, a thick band of stars, dust and nebulae. The map below shows the Milky Way as a shaded area extending from Perseus in the north, down through Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Lacerta, Cygnus where in splits creating a dark area known as The Great Rift, Aquila, Scutum and Sagittarius.

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