I"m looking for a really good, high definition map of the Milkyway galaxy that includes the labeling of arms, nebula and other points of interest. Any suggestions on where to find one?

Something like this but detailing points of interest...

This may be of interest to you.

You can find several ways of viewing that map at the Glimpse360 project here.

EDIT: if you use the Aladin viewer on that page, you can switch to J2000 coordinates (RA & Dec), so you can match up which part of the sky you're looking at with standard astronomical maps.

Thanks Cali. Bookmarked that site

But I'm looking for more of a tourist's guide map to the galaxy kind of thing. Like a navigational map to find stuff like Barnard's loop, the Heart and Soul nebulas, Lagoon Nebula, etc... So something detailed with POIs indicated. I want to use it to plot out routes for Elite Dangerous.

I have found these, but they are only partial maps not including the segment I'm currently in.



More here in the Distant Worlds Expedition thread:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=171240

CdesignProponentsist wrote:. I want to use it to plot out routes for Elite Dangerous.

Really!?! I would never have guessed.

Awesome idea.

If I could find one. I find it hard to believe that none exists.

Part of the problem is that when you're on the edge of a galaxy, as we are, it's difficult to gather data about the galaxy as you move deeper into the interior. As the star density increases (along with the density of intervening gas and dust clouds that attenuate visible light, the ability to gather meaningful position data on objects decreases, especially if one is attempting to do this over a distance of 30,000 light years. It gets even worse if you're trying to determine what's on the other side of the galaxy whilst trying to look through that dense central region. Big, spectacular objects with massive luminosities are going to dominate the data, whilst an object resembling Barnard's Star is going to be rendered close to unobservable. The modest luminosity of such an object is going to suffer from two effects: attenuation of its light by intervening dust and gas clouds between it and us, and the swamping of any remaining signal by the far larger signal emanating from the high-luminosity objects, whose light can punch through the attenuating barriers.

A properly complete map of our galaxy of the sort you want, with a large catalogue of star systems of interest throughout the galactic disc, won't be possible until we have the ability to map the galaxy from multiple locations. Even if we acquire working warp drives and the means to power them overnight, this is a project that will take centuries to complete, despite the manner in which those tools would facilitate the project way beyond our current wildest dreams.

Oh, and of course, there's another problem. Even if we could solve the attenuation problem completely, and obtain a clear view of even low-luminosity objects over galactic distances, we'd be seeing those objects as they were thousands of years ago, and their positions might have changed significantly in the time taken for light signals to reach us from them. So constructing a navigational chart of the galaxy is going to be problematic from that standpoint. Even if you have access to FTL travel Star Trek style, you still have the problem of setting up precise reference points that are valid in the present over vast distances. Then you have to perform your surveys from those reference points, and try to arrange to coordinate all of this work so that it occurs in a short enough time frame, for the data from all reference points to be valid here in the present. Coordinating that sort of survey work over distances of up to 100,000 light years is about as non-trivial a task as you could wish for.

Sendraks wrote:

CdesignProponentsist wrote:. I want to use it to plot out routes for Elite Dangerous.

Really!?! I would never have guessed.

Awesome idea.

Huh, and here's me thinking he was going on vacation

Calilasseia wrote:Oh, and of course, there's another problem. Even if we could solve the attenuation problem completely, and obtain a clear view of even low-luminosity objects over galactic distances, we'd be seeing those objects as they were thousands of years ago, and their positions might have changed significantly in the time taken for light signals to reach us from them. So constructing a navigational chart of the galaxy is going to be problematic from that standpoint. Even if you have access to FTL travel Star Trek style, you still have the problem of setting up precise reference points that are valid in the present over vast distances. Then you have to perform your surveys from those reference points, and try to arrange to coordinate all of this work so that it occurs in a short enough time frame, for the data from all reference points to be valid here in the present. Coordinating that sort of survey work over distances of up to 100,000 light years is about as non-trivial a task as you could wish for.

I'm just looking for an approximation based on their observed positions and approximate distances. But I'm aware of the difficulty in plotting actual locations. Doesn't have to be accurate, but would give me enough to find them in game and plot a site seeing route.

I could do it in the in game map but it only shows detail on very small scales.

Found this one from Nat Geo which is a good example of what i'm looking for, but with more POIs.