I also included two links to images of the whole sky using different wavelengths of light: infrared and radio waves. There are obviously some stars outside of this ring, but there are fewer of them (the caption for the map of half a billion stars points out that in some parts of the sky there are 150,000 stars per square degree, while in others there are only 500 stars per square degree). This tells us that if we could follow the Milky Way below our personal view of the horizon, it would be seen as a ring completely encircling the Earth. The Milky Way is seen as a mostly flat, irregularly-shaped feature that stretches from side to side of every image. There is a common feature in all of these images. In Starry Night, if you choose "Galactic Plane" from the Favorites Menu (under Deep Space / Milky Way), you can see a similar view.2MASS: The whole sky seen in the infrared part of the spectrum.APOD: The whole sky seen in the radio part of the spectrum.APOD: A modern, digital photograph of the entire sky.APOD: A map of half a billion stars (Note: Uses a different map projection).
APOD: 1950s era drawing of the whole sky.Below are several examples of these Aitoff projections of the whole sky. Although this particular map projection is not used as much anymore for maps of the Earth, astronomers often use this same projection of the three-dimensional sky onto a two-dimensional picture when they want to represent the whole sky in a single picture. In this map of the Earth, you can see the entire globe and all of the continents and oceans represented inside of the elliptical boundary.
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