The Milky Way galaxy may be a different shape than we thought

[lapfog_1]

3. to get an accurate picture

we either need to map all the stars that we think are in our galaxy (relative to us).. and this picture will be, of necessity, inaccurate because of time dilation ( we really don't know where things are because of the speed of light). The second way would be to send a probe out of the galactic plane, probably a few hundred light years... again, thousands of years (with any current technology) for us to place a probe in the right place and get an image back to earth.

sigh.

With what we think we know now about physics, warp drive is unlikely so traveling around the galaxy is likely never going to happen.