When we gaze at the misty ribbon of the Milky Way, we are looking edge-on at the denser concentrations of stars in our own galaxy. We're inside the Milky Way, looking either out or further in, depending on the direction we're facing from Earth.

From this perspective, the Milky Way appears to wrap around us in a circle that narrows if we're looking at the periphery of the disk and widens as our gaze shifts towards the center.

The few individual stars we can make out are those closest to us. Most stars are so distant that we only see them as part of the combined light of billions.