Imagine a vinyl record, and that you are sitting on the record, near, but not at, the outer edge of the record. South of you, but close to the horizon, is the c

Imagine a vinyl record, and that you are sitting on the record, near, but not at, the outer edge of the record. South of you, but close to the horizon, is the centre of the record - containing a massive black hole. North of you are all the stars in the galaxy between you and the edge of the galaxy. Most of the stars in the galaxy are scattered along the disc, but with a fairly large variation. The closer you get to the centre, the greater the number of stars - that is the brightest part of our night sky. Some ancient clusters of stars have drifted a fair bit away from the disc, but are still gravitationally bound to it, and its dark matter. If you were on another galaxy looking from above, our galaxy would look like a spiral with arms. If you looked edge on, it would look more like a cigar.