A New 3-D Picture of the Milky Way with Classical Cepheids

The global view of the Milky Way as a barred spiral galaxy was inferred from various tracers, e.g., star counts or radio maps of Galactic gas, as well as from our extrapolation of structures seen in other galaxies. However, distances to these tracers are measured indirectly and are model-dependent, so the exact structure of our Galaxy is still under debate. We present a new comprehensive picture of our Galaxy in three-dimensions based on the positions in the sky and precisely measured distances of thousands of newly detected Classical Cepheids. We unravel, for the first time, the real structure of our Galaxy as seen via the young stellar population. This new picture allows us to precisely constrain the Galactic disk shape and dig into the recent history of our Galaxy.