Astronomers have released the sharpest and clearest map of the Milky Way galaxy yet, revealing that our solar system apparently belongs to a larger arm of the galaxy than previously thought.

About 150 years ago, the Milky Way was thought to be a perfect spiral-shaped galaxy. Astronomers were able to identify its arms during the 1950s. Scientists still debate about the exact shape and structure of our galaxy, including its length and the size of these hot gasses and dust stretching into deep space.

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The arms of the galaxy are filled with stellar material where stars are born. However, this cosmic dust can obscure our telescopes in measuring distances, hence, making mapping a complex process.

Our solar system is thought to be located in a region called Local Arm, inside a structure known as the Orion Spur. The structure has two larger arms known as Perseus and Scutum-Centaurus which are denser and filled with more stars.The Sagittarius and the Outer arms, on the other hand, have lesser stars and more gas.

According to the co-author of the study Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, our Local Arm is apparently just as big as the other arms.

Using data obtained from the Very Long Baseline Array in New Mexico, extremely precise measurements were obtained of these gas clouds inside the arms. Astronomers discovered their distances using a star measuring technique known as parallax.

Reid explains that radio telescopes can "see" galactic planes of these massive star-forming regions and detect its spiral structure, but optical wavelengths can be obscured and hidden by cosmic dust. A highly accurate parallax is hard to achieve, he noted.

New measurements now reveal that the Milky Way is apparently not a grand spiral design and does not possess well-defined arms. Our galaxy appears more like a spiral with multiple arms and subtle spurs.

Also, the Orion Spur is apparently not a spur but an actual arm of the galaxy. Scientists also detected a spur that links our Local Arm to the Sagittarius arms.

This new study has been published in the journal, Science Advances.