Artist's impression of the Milky Way

This artist's impression shows how the Milky Way galaxy would look from very different perspectives than we get from the Earth. From some angles the central bulge shows up as a peanut shaped glowing ball of stars and from above the central narrow bar appears clearly. The many spiral arms and their associated dust clouds are also clearly seen. More information: Credit: ESO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Kornmesser/R. Hurt