We have more or less accurate measurements for directions and distances of many of the stars and nabulae that make up the milky way.

The rest is just drawing a map, just like islands and continents in ye olden days before satellites.

Also we see how other galaxies look which is the equivalent to the image in the jigsaw box.

We have X Rays that can see through the dust cloud so we can measure stars on the other side I just think we are missing data from the complete opposite side due to the supermassive black hole at the center that attracts dense clusters of stars.

I could be wrong but that's what the YouTube channels taught me, I think.

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If this is the case, in the same way old maps were somewhat incorrect, could that be the same for ours now?

To some extent, yes. Unless I'm totally mistalen the distances of some stellar objects are very accurately known but some are fairly rough estimates. So the overall shape is probably very well fixed by the most accurate bits but the details are a bit fuzzy.

The 21cm emission line of neutral hydrogen was used to map the interstellar hydrogen gas clouds in the early 1950's. This gave us the first detailed images of the spiral structure of the Milky Way.

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I'm pretty sure Mars Bars has a machine so Milky Ways are all pretty consistent. They're all reasonably identical in shape, and all identically delicious.

Edit: oh this is r/space. Guess there's a reason my Reddit recap avatar is a foodie 🤣

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I wonder about the delay in time from some of those stars which are hundreds of light years apart. I suppose that’s taken into consideration as well, but it seems like a Herculean task to me without computers.

Imagine if we are just radial spokes and it looks like a spiral because of the time it takes the light to reach us from further away 😄

I think because it's slower the further out from center you go that spokes are not going to be more than occasional & brief occurrences.

Hello u/omg-whats-this, your submission "Determining the shape of Milky Way" has been removed from r/space because:

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Hello u/omg-whats-this, your submission "Determining the shape of Milky Way" has been removed from r/space because:

• Such questions should be asked in the "All space questions" thread stickied at the top of the sub.

Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please message the r/space moderators. Thank you.