The Milky Way Galaxy

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Look up at night -- not from Cleveland (or any other city for that matter). We see a faint band of light overhead: the Milky Way Using a telescope, the Milky Way can be resolved into individual stars. (Milky Way from KPNO)

Let's "unwrap" the sky and make a map. What do we see?

From Axel Mellinger's Milky Way Panorama page. There's a newer, beautifully interactive version as well.
 
 
 
 

1755: Immanuel Kant proposes that the Galaxy is a disk of stars (including our Sun)   1785: Wiliam Herschel uses star count data to map the Milky Way. He assumes: all stars have the same brightness the galaxy has a uniform density he can see to the edge Herschel's map of the Milky Way puts the Sun very near the center of the Galaxy.
	Herschel's map of the Milky Way