This is a disc of stars floating in space (our sun being one of them), yet it appears as pale band across the night sky going from lower right to upper left here. One way to visualize this is If you were an ant sitting on a spoke of a bicycle wheel, and turned to look back at the center of the wheel you would see the thickness of the inside rim spanning your horizon. Likewise the diagonal band going from upper left to lower right here is the “thickness” of the disc of our home galaxy seen from the inside.
