2 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science
I am trying to find a map of the milky way, looking down on the plane that would show the main stars with distances to Earth. Ideally it would be on some sort of grid. I can't seem to find anything like this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Comment by atomfullerene at 26/04/2023 at 18:16 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Most of the visible stars in the night sky are pretty close to earth relative to the size of the milky way galaxy, and are also spread out in three dimensions rather than on a plane.
But here's a map of the nearest 50 light years
http://www.icc.dur.ac.uk/~tt/Lectures/Galaxies/LocalGroup/Back/50lys.html
Most of the stars we can see at night are within a couple hundred light years.
Note for context that the galaxy is 100,000 light-years across and one to a few thousand light years thick (depending on what you are counting)