Earlier this year, I published a face-on map of the Milky Way in atomic hydrogen and added a large new section to this site explaining how it was derived from radio parallax and atomic hydrogen surveys.
As that section explains, visual and atomic hydrogen maps of galaxies are related but different. Atomic hydrogen surveys reveal complex structures that are sometimes visually obscured by dust in visual images.
I'm often asked for a face-on image of the Milky Way as it would appear from a spacecraft hovering far above the galactic centre. We don't have enough data yet to construct such an image in full detail, but NASA illustrator Robert Hurt has produced a schematic that does a good job combining a lot of available data. I've mentioned before that there are some inaccuracies in the Hurt image, and now that I have an atomic hydrogen map, I decided to produce a revised version of Hurt's image.
I started with Nick Risinger's version of the Hurt image, which adds more detail from real galaxies to make the Hurt image appear more realistic. I then warped the arm locations to conform to my atomic hydrogen map and added more details such as the complex network of spurs and bridges in our region of the galaxy. I've also split the Perseus arm into two distinct segments based on the evidence I presented in this blog post.
The result is below. You can download a full resolution (2528x2360) image here.