Distribution of red giants perpendicular
to the Milky Way disk. The plot shows
the number of K giant stars above the Sun seen in a survey taken
with telescopes at Mount Stromlo Observatory. The distance of the
stars above the Sun is expressed in parsecs (a little over 3 light
years); the survey reaches stars more than 3000 light years away.
The curve shows the expected number of stars based on a theoretical
computation using the gravitational attraction of all the known stars
around the Sun; it is a very good match to the data.