Artists Impressions from Charles Roberts Studios
How can we take pictures of the Milky Way galaxy (including our Sun in it)?
If the furthest man-made object is only at the edge of the solar system?
Do they reflect it off something?
Or are all the pictures “artist impressions”?
We know pretty much what the Milky Way galaxy looks like, from radio spectroscopy measurements. These give the radial velocity of gas clouds at different positions. We can therefore tell that the Milky Way is an SBc galaxy with a luminosity of around 10 billion times the Sun. The pictures shown are usually artist’s composites of similar galaxies, perhaps with the additional detail (if they’re being conscientious) of the positions of the various known spiral arms, orientation of the bar, etc.
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