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There is something about seeing our home from a distance that is special 鈥� whether it鈥檚 spotting your neighbourhood from an aeroplane or looking at pictures of Earth taken from space, it lends a sense of perspective. Astronauts call this the overview effect: a feeling of awe and connection to the communities and world around us, and the beauty of our little green planet. It has always seemed a bit sad to me that we couldn鈥檛 get an even broader perspective, a picture of our whole solar system or galaxy from afar, to help put into perspective how tiny our world is, how special.

But even though we will never get an image of the Milky Way galaxy from above 鈥� it is simply too big for us to send a spacecraft far enough 鈥� this month is a perfect time to spot the next best thing. In the northern hemisphere, if you have a small telescope or even a decent pair of binoculars, you can look out for another galaxy similar to our own, called M81 or Bode鈥檚 galaxy (pictured).

This galaxy is about 12 million light years away, so it isn鈥檛 even in the top 100 closest galaxies to our own. But at nearly 100,000 light years across, its size and brightness make it one of the best to observe. It is only slightly smaller than the Milky Way, and both are spiral galaxies, so looking at Bode鈥檚 galaxy may be the easiest way to see what our own galaxy would look like from afar.

There are some differences between the two. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, meaning its arms protrude from a huge bar-shaped block of stars at its centre, while Bode鈥檚 galaxy is a 鈥済rand design鈥� spiral, so it has more defined arms and no bar. But what it lacks in a bar, it makes up for in lucky positioning: it is almost perfectly face-on to Earth, so if you have a strong enough telescope (one about 8 inches or bigger), you might be able to make out the individual arms swooping out from its bright, dense centre.

The best time to spot Bode鈥檚 galaxy is around midnight, when it is at its highest in the sky. You can locate it using Ursa Major, also known as the Big Dipper or Plough. If you can find Dubhe, the star at the very top of the Dipper鈥檚 dipper, the galaxy is about 10 degrees north-west from there. Picturing it being along a line drawn from Dubhe to the star opposite it on the dipper, Phecda, may help.

If you can, imagine that Bode鈥檚 galaxy is our own Milky Way. The solar system is located on a small spiral arm, about halfway between the galaxy鈥檚 centre and its edge. Every other tiny point of light in the galaxy is another star, probably with at least one other planet, and there are hundreds of billions of them in our galaxy and Bode鈥檚. That is just about one solar system for every human who has ever lived. Even if there is other life out there in the universe, I think that makes Earth and the little lives we lead here pretty special.

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Leah Crane is a features editor at 快猫短视频 based in Chicago. You can reach her at launchpad@newscientist.com