These sorts of images always makes me wonder about how many of the images of the universe we see, are how they look from our perspective, vs how they look from "above" etc.

I suppose this one is from our perspective?

How we know that the arms of the milky way are bent when viewed "from above"? Imagine if they were straight lines when viewed from above. From our perspective, they would appear to be spiraling arms, since the light at the far end of the arm would take longer to reach us.

I'm not doubting astrophysics here, I'm just a layperson that wonders how these things are properly taken into account.