on the inner edge of a spiral arm called the Orion–Cygnus Arm. There is good reason to believe that stars in the galaxy's thin disk are different from thicker part of the disk, and from the bulge and the halo. Some stars are obviously more common in spiral arms than in the disk in between the arms. Knowing that these effects create bias, astronomers analyzing star counts attempt to find how much bias each effect has caused and then compensate for it as well as they can. Inherent luminosity complications The greatest problem biasing star counts is the extreme differences in inherent brightness of different sizes. Heavy, bright stars (both giants and blue dwarfs) are the most common stars listed in general star catalogs, even though on average they are rare in space. Small dim stars (red dwarfs) seem to be the most common stars in space, at least locally, but can only be seen with large telescopes, and then only when they are within a few tens of light-years from Earth. For example, the blue supergiant ζ Puppis is 400 million times more luminous than the nearest star, a red dwarf named Proxima, or α Centauri C. Even though Proxima is only 4.2 light-years away from us, it is so dim that it cannot be seen with the naked eye (one of its companions, α Centauri A, is visible). ζ Puppis is one of the brightest of the visible blue supergiants. It is so bright that it appears to be a second magnitude star, even though ζ Puppis is 1,399 light-years away. Count