eli5 How do we know how our galaxy looks like if we’re part of it ?

Question

We can only see ourselves if we look in the mirror or our photos or like we can see how our planet looks because of the satellites . But how can we see our galaxy

In: 10

Answer 1

I can draw a map of my subdivision even when I’m inside of it. If I had any artistic talent I could even do a painting of it. Same with the Milky Way, you just map out what stars you can pin down, extrapolate the rest, and hand that map over to an artist to do a rendition of it. Which is what the “overhead” maps of our galaxy are, renditions not photos.

Although we can’t do that accurate of a map of the MW because of the Zone of Avoidance. Essentially we can’t see that far into either the arms and barely at all through the core as dust and other stars block our vision after a fairly short distance in any wavelength but infrared.