The Milky Way in galactic coordinates

It's cool, isn't it? This Milky Way image in galactic coordinates in Mercator projection was obtained from “All-Sky Milky Way Panorama 2.0”, a wonderful page that contains version 2 of the sky image and raw data. The good thing about this view of our galaxy is that you can see very well the great dark nebulae and, having superimposed figures of the constellations, their distribution within the Milky Way.

Perhaps you can find the figures of the constellations appear rare—certainly they are not the commonly drawn constellations in the sky charts. The version shown here of the constellations is a modified one from H. A. Rey, a very educational one for learning orientation and memorization of the night sky. The alterations in the figures are generally slight, and always I have had in mind the well-known and essential asterisms for a quick identification, or the actual extent of the constellations according to their limits approved by the UIA in 1928.

The dark red circles marks the position of the celestial poles (the North, top left, close to Polaris, the “tail” of the Little Dipper), and the red one marks the position of Sagittarius A, the source of gamma-ray emission assumed to be the center of our galaxy.

Both the Magellanic Clouds (the cloudy patches near the south celestial pole, below left the former constellation Argo Navis, the currently known as Carina, Vela, Puppis and Pyxis, in this version actually looks like a ship floating in the Milky Way) and the Andromeda galaxy, a small stain close to the Andromeda constellation ‘knee’, in the North Celestial Pole perpendicular under the galactic Ecuador, are remarkable.