If there is something difficult to realise is how vast space is. No matter how hard we try, as humans we lack mental categories to figure it out. Another difficult thing is obviously to map it – and we do need to map it, if we have to get to know it eventually. Now, endeavours like the Spitzer’s 360-D Map of the Milky Way accomplish exactly this.
Spitzer’s videos are amazing too, and there are many available, at different degrees of details and resolution. For an introduction, you can watch this trailer:
A GLIMPSE map has been created, assembling all the GLIMPSE360 images in a single all-sky equirectangular projection. If you fancy a nice poster for your office, here it’s where you have to go.
And you can have more, should you want to. Namely, the raw data files GLIMPSE is built upon. These files span 45 x 10 degrees and are given, in galactic coordinates, i.e., with galactic latitude of 0, and the final digits in the file names indicate the centre galactic longitude of each tile. Caveat: they are huge, around 1 GB each, so you better get a broadband before attempting to download them.