Sternenkarte der Milchstraße

Where are the Qu

A good looking star map. Though as an amateur astronomer, the names of constellations may not be the best way to identify geographic regions in the galaxy.

Constellations are constructs for how we view stars from Earth. But just because a grouping of stars appears close together from our viewpoint doesn’t mean they are close together physically. A somewhat close but moderate sized star may appear near to a very distant but super large star in our sky. They may look about the same brightness to us but are nothing alike and nowhere near each other. They are just in roughly the same direction.

While not a constellation, the asterism known as the Summer Triangle is a good example. Of the three stars in the triangle: Vega is about 25.8 light years away, Altair is 16.7 light years away, but Deneb is at least 1,500 light years (but probably further) from us.

Worth remembering that the unlabelled stuff, especially in the zone of avoidance is largely theoretical. Those pretty far reaches of the Centaurus arm are a painting not a photo.

Is there a high resolution map?