What would the Milky Way look like if the Sun were situated substantially above the plane of the galaxy?

Question

How would early 20th century measurements of the size and shape of the galaxy have been affected?

Answer 1

Early 20th century stellar astronomers would not have made the mistake of the "Kapteyn Universe"---you'd be able to see that the Milky Way looked like M31. However, most of the more interesting models of the Milky Way come from velocity measurements of gas and stars right in the disk, and those measurements, peculiar to the Milky Way, would be denied us. We'd have to settle for measurements like those we can do on other galaxies.

Answer 2

We would see the structure of our galaxy and astronomers would be happy as a clam just to see it. Star clouds and star forming regions would be apparent all over the region of sky covered by the Milky Way, and the night sky will be a lot brighter when it's high above the horizon. Presently the Milky Way is thought to be a barred spiral galaxy, but the central bar is fairly small. The bar and the nucleus would be easily seen by the unaided eye, and the spiral arms would be brilliantly visible against the blackness of intergalactic space. A good analog for what our galaxy might look like is the barred spiral galaxy M-58, which is bright enough for a good view through small and medium sized telescopes. Supernovae that go off anywhere in the galaxy would likely be visible as well. Since of the sky would be dominated by the Milky Way, we won't be seeing as much of the larger universe as we do now, but we would be seeing more or our galaxy's globular star clusters since fewer would be hidden from view by interstellar dust.

Answer 3

Instead of looking like a band, it would look like a rather circular disk, with (maybe) a brighter portion towards the central bulge (depending how 'substantially' above you decide to put us).

It could have affected the way we think about galaxies (we might understand galaxies to be distinct formations; e.g., Andromeda galaxy might be better understood as another galaxy rather than a nebula).

However, it is possible that we would not as easily understood our own position relative to a galaxy (it may reinforce the concept that the solar system is a very central entity, surrounded by galaxies, one of which is close while the others are further away).