Subway Map of the Milky Way Galaxy

In the Milky Way Transit Authority, Samuel Arbesman has taken the subway map infographic style and applied it to the Milky Way, using stars and nebula as the station points.  The lines do correlate to the spiral arms of the galaxy.

Each line on the map corresponds to an arm of the galaxy, and the ‘stations’ are places in their actual locations, albeit stars, nebula and other astronomical objects.  The inspiration for the schematic representation came after he re-read Carl Sagan’s novel ‘Contact’, which alludes to a cosmic Grand Central Station.  The idea drew him to analyse the first modern subway map, London’s Tube map, which was designed by Harry Beck.

Found on digg.com