system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do we know what the milky way looks like as a whole if we are inside of it?

This may sound dumb, but I've always wondered how we have pictures of the milky way galaxy from what looks like the outside even though we are inside of it. Are these pictures just artist renditions of what we think it looks like or is there something I'm missing?
gpt
We know how far away every star is from us, and in what direction. Plug all these values into a big computer program and it will estimate the shape of the galaxy. Most of the pictures you've seen are an artist's imagining.