Explore The Milky Way

Our Milky Way Galaxy is shown here in 3D. The actual positions of stars, clusters and nebulae are not exact in this model, however, their positions are representative of the actual positions of these types of objects in our galaxy.

Population I: objects located within the Galaxy disk (the spiral arms): hot stars, open star clusters and gaseous nebulae;
Population II: objects of the spherical component (halo) of our Galaxy: globular clusters and the oldest stars;
Open star clusters: groups of physically associated stars numbering several hundreds to several thousands of members distributed in a region several parsecs in size;
Global star clusters: look like tiny spherical galaxies ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of stars;
Gaseous nebulae: bright and dark gas-dust clouds in the Galaxy.

You can also adjust your view of the galaxy by clicking on the model, and while holding the left mouse button down, drag to rotate the model and see it from any angle you wish. Use the CTRL key while dragging to shift its viewing position.