How Do We Know What the Milky Way Really Looks Like?

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We have all seen images of the Milky way that look like there are taken at great distances from the outside but how do we know that is correct. The Voyager spacecraft have been travelling for 44 years but have only gone 0.002 light years from Earth and will take another 40,000 years to reach our nearest neighbouring star.
So in this video we look at how we know that the Milky way looks like on the outside from the inside.

Written, researched and presented by Paul Shillito
Images and footage : NASA, Sam Sciluna, Yuri Beletsky, Mehmet Ergün, Maksymilian Novak-Zemplinski


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