>>941376451
Excellent question, I appreciate you for asking it.
I found the answer:
It's not a photo, it's "Artist's conception of the Milky Way galaxy." from 2009.
Essentially, he used a real space photo of a very classic (average) looking spiral-arm galaxy, and overlaid a map on the milkyway on top/below and mashed them together. (No idea what artistic tools or methods were used)
It's based on two images:
[1] From NASA's Jet-Propulsion Laboratory in 2008:
>"Artist's conception of the spiral structure of the Milky Way with two major stellar arms and a central bar."
>"Using infrared images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that the Milky Way's elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars.
>Previously, our galaxy was thought to possess four major arms."
[2]: NASA and ESA's 2008 space photo of the "Whirlpool Galaxy"(Spiral Galaxy M51, NGC 5194)
>The Whirlpool Galaxy (Spiral Galaxy M51, NGC 5194), a classic spiral galaxy located in the Canes Venatici constellation, and its companion NGC 5195.
The artist, Nick R, seems to be an Aussie amateur astrophotographer/astronomer who may have gone inactive since then.
[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:236084main_MilkyWay-full-annotated.jpg
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Messier51_sRGB.jpg
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050428.html
