We don't have photos of the Milky Way as a whole, but all the stars you see around you are part of the Milky Way. Astronomers study the stars and build models to approximate their positions which helps give us a rough idea of what the Milky Way looks like, although there are parts we can't see very well (anything on the other side of the galactic core is mostly obscured by dust around the core itself, for example).
radlandsnatlpark t1_izhaf2f wrote
Reply to How do we know what the milky way looks like? by Riceeatingcommunist
We don't have photos of the Milky Way as a whole, but all the stars you see around you are part of the Milky Way. Astronomers study the stars and build models to approximate their positions which helps give us a rough idea of what the Milky Way looks like, although there are parts we can't see very well (anything on the other side of the galactic core is mostly obscured by dust around the core itself, for example).