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Hi Greg,
I really enjoyed your image of this rather neglected section of the band of the Milky Way.
I used to be a night watchman of the Milky Way, and I once knew exactly which section of the apparent Milky Way corresponds to which section of the nearby spiral structure.
I do have some recent papers about the structure of the Milky Way;
but spiral structure studies of our own Galaxy have been neglected by professionals for a couple of decades ( as there was little progress, for a long time, in figuring out the exact spiral structure of our galaxy!)
I suspect that the Orion/Monoceros Milky Way, as observed from our solar system, may be some type of feature that is in between the two major spiral arms that exist both immediately in from the sun and immediately outwards from the sun.
Certainly, the surface brightness of the Milky Way here is noticeably low.
I will see if I can find some recent plots of the three-dimensional spiral structure of our galaxy, so as to be able to figure out exactly what we are seeing here in your image.
cheers, Robert
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