Are there instruments that can detect stars and galaxies that lie along the plane of our galaxie on the other side of the center bulge? It seems like there should be a lot of material there that lies hidden from our view.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

IR astronomy. NASA has published a map taken by the WISE space IR telescope.
Tullio

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^ What he said. Occlusion is much worse at some wavelengths than others. Infrared allows us to see much that is obscured in the visible spectrum.

random semi-relevant link http://www.milkywayproject.org/

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I cannot remember what it's called but there is a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way, currently on the opposite side, that was detected with infrared.

Here is a link to WISE:
WISE
Tullio

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This is the observable universe and Milky way makes these pointed dark zones for our observation even with IR technology:

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Mandtugai!

That's what I remember seeing from the IR map, a big chunk of the universe is hiding behind the center bulge of the Milky Way. After all the stars at our galactic core are IR sources too so they blank out anything behind them.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Since the universal material distribution is similar everywhere behind those 2 slice of dark pizzas expect similar galaxies spreading. ;)

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Mandtugai!

Depending on what you are supposed to be seeing, in my guess.

If these dots represent bright stars in our Milky Way galaxy, this is not that difficult to comprehend.

But only part of the whole field is visible, making me think that these dots rather is representing galaxies or even cluster of galaxies beyond our own.

How about distances then?

Most people should be familiar with the local galaxy cluster group in which our Milky Way is taking part.

It is one of some 20-30 other galaxies, of which two are quite large ones.

One of them is the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31. Like the Milky Way, which has the Large and Small Magellanic clouds orbiting it, M31 also has two companion galaxies, both of which are elliptical dwarfs.

They are elliptical because the M31 system is supposed to be a very old and evolved set of galaxies.

A third galaxy, a little more to the south is M33. This galaxy is also a relatively young system. It does however have no companion galaxies.

So in order to travel to a town of galaxies, first place would be to visit the galaxies close to the center or nucleus of the large Virgo galaxy cluster which has some 3,000 galaxies in total.

But the distance of somewhere between 40 million and 70 million light years makes one think we are not a member of this galaxy cluster at all.

So if your city of living is a town of 10,000 and you are having a neighboring city of 1 million people which is some three hours away by means of driving by car, if you fancy going somewhere else there may be some three choices for you to choose between.

First choice is visiting one of the galaxies in the Coma Cluster of galaxies.

This galaxy cluster is some 400 million light years from home.

In its core there are two giant elliptical galaxies dominating things.

Also there is a bright spiral galaxy with a very bright nucleus on its way to become an elliptical galaxy a little to the north in the field. Another galaxy, a spiral galaxy face on towards us, but "mirrored", is located a little to the south and east in the same field.

Next choice is going to the Corona Borealis galaxy cluster which is a rich cluster, but some 1,3 billion light years away from us.

Third choice is an area spread across the summer sky which is called the Hercules galaxy cluster. There are many members being part of this galaxy cluster, but the distance is probably even greater than that for the Corona Borealis galaxy cluster and its density is quite low as mentioned, meaning its members are quite widespread.

What is next in this list? Does anyone know anything more?

My best guess is that such a cluster, probably not always having too many individual galaxies being members of such a cluster, may be having an Abell designation or something else similar to such a designation.

And most of the rest of space is in fact empty. We are currently not able to see to the end of space.