"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > Aren't we *in* the Milky Way?
>
> Yes, and it's quite a flat disc, so looking out from Earth along the plane
> of the disc you see a lot more stars than looking out perpendicular to it,
> this looks like a brighter band going across the sky.

This is a pretty awesome photo of the whole thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deathvalleysky_nps_big.jpg

Not exactly what you'd see with the naked eye but it gives you the idea.

> >> BTW if you're interested, one of the brightest "stars" in the sky at the
> >> moment is actually Jupiter.
> >
> > Any ideas what the visual angle for that is? ;-)
>
> Wikipedia tells me the radius is 71500 km, Stellarium tells me it's 5.224 AU
> away from us, so googling "2*71500 km / 5.224 AU in degrees" gives 0.01
> degrees.

Jupiter and Saturn are particularly easy to pick out, because they're big enough
to be actual discs rather than points like regular stars. And if you can hold
binoculars steady enough you'll just about see Saturn's rings.

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