Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 12/27/2004

Question
Our science teacher gave us an assignment over the holiday break. I not sure if one of the questions is a trick question.

Do we have any pictures looking down on the Milky Way galaxy?

I don't see why we shouldn't have any.

Answer
Hello Lisa,
I am not sure if she had any tricks on her mind about this question, but the answer is yes and no!
1 - Yes because, there are other galaxies that are very much like the milky way, that we see "from the top"! If we allow some reverse logic like "if they look like this from this angle, we must look the same as we are alike", then we can take those photos as "our photos" too.

2 - No because, no one has gone so far out in space, above the galactic plane (some 1000 light years at least before we get the complete picture of our galaxy that is 100,000 light years wide!
Our puny machines travelling at less than 50,000 km / hour
would take "countless ages" to travel that distance, and the pictures they would beam back would take 1000's of years to reach us!

Hence prudence demands we use the first indirect method.

Other method (equally indirect) is to scan the milky way along its flat plane, and locate the stars with respect to us on a computer, and then rotate the image and see the milky way from whatever distance we want at whatever angle we want, using computer software animation!

That way you could have complete movies let alone pictures!
Jayen