GAIA

Le Monde today is referencing the ESA (European Spaca Agency) GAIA project,
which published - last spring - a detailed 3D map of the Milky Way Galaxy.
A phenomenal 1,7 billion stars are referenced.

The web site explains that this map corrects for the earth's parallax problem in
doing stellar cartography (the picture will change depending on where the earth
finds itself in its annual orbit around the sun.) According to Wikipedia, what we
are seeing is 'proper position' ie where these bodies are with respect to the center
of gravity of the galaxy.