Our Galaxy Status

It also serves as a great tool for education and outreach with its unusual visual perspective on the location of deep sky objects and their relationship to the center and plane of our galaxy.  OurGalaxy enhances the observing experience by helping the user arrive at an intuitive sense of physical location, size, luminosity, and distance for the chosen object.  It addition, it illustrates the structural components of the Galaxy, including the thin disk, thick disk, galactic bulge and stellar halo.  It helps you visualize the 3-dimensional locations of deep sky objects in and around our galaxy, and provides you with an understanding of their physical properties.  The 3-D interface allows you to see where the cluster or nebula of interest is located relative to the center and plane of the Galaxy.  By panning around, or moving closer to or farther away from the object, you derive a sense of where the object really is in 3-dimensional space.  Our Galaxy is a unique app for both amateur astronomers and astronomy educators.  See more videos and screenshots at the otherwise. com website.