Q&A: General Astronomy and Space Science Every picture of a
spiral galaxy including our own, depicts a very bright,
spherical center ... I assume a dense cluster of stars. We can
see this bright center in distant galaxies, and I've always
wondered, why we don't see the bright center of our own. Or, do
we, and I don't know what I'm looking at? It seems it would be
far brighter than our Sun, even though we are at the far edge of
the galaxy. Thanks for helping me find it!! There is a spherical
region surrounding the central region of our galaxy known as the
"bulge" which is indeed dense with stars. It is actually more
luminious than it appears because its light is diminished by
absorption from dust as well as distance by the time it reaches
us. The Earth is situated in the middle of the plane of our
galaxy where the absorption towards the center is maximum. The
surface brightness, or brightness per angular area, of the bulge
is much less than the Sun's because of this absorption and the
fact that the stars, thou