UPGRADE! (with picturey goodness)

Scientists have discovered that we’re in a much more prominent spot in the Milky Way than was originally though.  Astronomers have, until this point, thought that our Sun sat in a not so prominent arm of our spiral galaxy.  With the new model, it was discovered that our arm (the Local Arm) is not really much different from our neighboring arms, the Perseus Arm and the Sagittarius Arm.  So, yay?

Given that we’re not even sure how many hundreds of billions (200 – 400) of stars there are in the Milky Way, it’s very difficult to get a clear picture of what our galaxy actually looks like.  We know what other galaxies look like because we can see them in their entirety.  The Milky Way, not so much.  It’s like trying to get the shape of a forest by standing right in the middle of it.