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Milky Way Gets Bigger
FU_Fish writes "Australian scientists have discovered a new arm reaching out from our beloved Milky Way. The arm is 60,000 light years away from the center of the galaxy and roughly 6,500 light years thick. I guess my dream of visiting every star in our galaxy just got a bit tougher."
The picture they chose for the article looks more like a typical shot of the core in Sagittarius from Earth. "Bird's-eye view" in this context would probably mean "seen from galactic north".
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
(pedantic...)
Don't you mean the far side of the moon? All parts of the moon get sunlight.
The dark side of the moon gets plenty of sunlight when the moon is between Earth and Sol.
Look here for more information about why we always see the same part of the moon
It actually doesn't matter all that much. Since there's no atmosphere there, you can still do a lot of optical observations during the lunar day. Only objects that appear near the sun would be off limits. The real advantage to the moon, though, would be for radio astronomy - the far side is quite well shielded from earth's radio noise.
This is not a birds-eye view. It's the view of the Milkyway from earth when you look towards the Center with Infrared Telescopes. If you want to see a real bird-eye view of the Milkyway spiral pattern you have to go here.
Actually, at the North and South poles of the moon there are craters that don't recieve any sunlight at the bottom, ever. Some people have advocated putting optical telescopes there. Others have discussed the proposition of building a circumlunar railway with the telescope mounted on it so that the telescope could always be on the dark side of the moon (the moon's rotation is a lot slower and it's a lot smaller, making the distance and speeds actually feasible.)
Despite those, the benefits of a radio telescope that you pointed out are still probably the most promising benefits of a lunar presence.