MY GOD, IT’S FULL OF STARS: Our corner of the Milky Way may be bigger than previously thought.

Some galaxies are near perfect spirals, with two or four arms starting at the center of the swirling stellar mass and entirely encircling it as the arms stretch outward. But not our galaxy. According to new research, the Milky Way galaxy is more of a patchwork spiral galaxy.

The evidence lies in our own galactic neighborhood. The section of the Milky Way that contains our solar system is actually a substantial spiral arm, not just a small spur as previously thought.

But the Local Arm, as our corner of the galaxy is called, does not fully encircle the galaxy as a perfect spiral arm would. Instead, it extends about 20,000 light-years around the galaxy, while some of the other arms extend five to six times that length, scientists report in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

If only there were some way to take a galactic selfie.