[sonicpixie]

can you see one of the spiral arms with the naked eye?
someone showed me this but is it really a spiral arm, anyone?

[Rob Instigator]

this is soooooo vague.

it almost feels specific.

[sonicpixie]

hehe sorry well when you look up from earth there is a band of something stretching across the whole sky which i never actually noticed before and my friend was pretty vague about it too he said it was the spiral arm but he didnt know if it was the spiral arm that we're in or another spiral arm of our galaxy... he concluded it must be one of the other arms but ive never heard this before i didnt think it could be seen with the naked eye????

[Rob Instigator]

ahh, the milky way/

we, our solar system, is one one of the spiral arms, out on the outskirts of the milky way. our galaxcy is actually a barred spiral. see below

 

[Rob Instigator]

 

the milky way as seen from within (in our solar syste,)

[sonicpixie]

ahhhh.......... thank you!

[floatingslowly]

it has to be pretty dark for it to look anything like what rob just posted.

on clear nights, in residential areas, it almost looks like high clouds.

it runs in a 60* arc against the ecliptic (the moon runs at 5*).

also, what is visible is the galactic bulge. the darkened bands seen are the result of dust clouds between our position and the center (a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A*).

as rob mentioned, the earth lies within a spiral arm. the brighter stars in the sky are all our neighbors.

[sonicpixie]

yeah it was only just faintly visible when i saw it, still pretty cool though! i do like to know what im looking at.