how can we have photos of the whole milky way galaxy while we are in it?

Question

on the interner I saw photos that said is of Milkey way
how can we get such photos when we are a part of it

Answer 1

No, we cannot. We are in the milky way. To have a picture of the whole milky way, we would have to be approximately 20 light years to get it in perspective. It is like taking a picture of, say, 100 people. You can't take the picture standing in the group; you have to be about 30 feet away from the line of 100 people.

Answer 2

Yeah - the other responders are right - either you've seen an artist's conception or a picture of another galaxy. Lots of times you'll see Andromeda, but that's really not a good match because the Milky Way is a barred spiral and looks very different from Andromeda.

Answer 3

We can't. The pictures you have seen are computer generated composites of what we know about our position in the galaxy from 'parallax' photos and what we can see of the rest of the galaxy. Voyager I is the thing we humans have sent the farthest out into space and it is still technically in our solar system. Nobody and nothing have ventured out far enough to take an actual photo of the Milky Way.

Answer 4

We don't.

What you are looking at are artist's renderings. Sometimes these may be montages made from other galaxies altogether. Really accurate models include quite a few of the stars in our vicinity, but the last time I checked we had not mapped the entire Milky Way Galaxy--only about half of it.

So far, nothing has really left our solar system, much less travelled beyond the next nearest star.

Answer 5

We don't. They are either fake, or are pictures from Andromeda, a galaxy just like our Milky Way. At most we can take pictures of the inside of the Milky Way, but not as seen from outside of it.

Answer 6

Basically, the same way you can have photographs of your house while you are in it.. Make photographs all around and stitch them together.

You can go on sites of astronomy magazines (Sky and Telescope, Astronomy) and search through their photo archive; you'll find plenty of photos showing different parts of the Milky Way, as seen from different parts of Earth.

Answer 7

Mostly composite photographs of other areas of the galaxy, pasted together to create a wide-angle shot.

Other than that, visual renderings based on things like radar telescopes and normal telescopes.

Answer 8

We can't. We have pictures of the Andromeda Galaxy, and just assume that our own galaxy looks a lot like that.

Answer 9

Thats a good question!