Parameters of the MW DoS: the 3-D distribution of the MW satellite galaxies. The 11 classical satellites are shown as large (yellow) circles, the 13 new satellites are represented by the smaller (green) dots, whereby Pisces I and II are the two southern dots. The two open squares near the MW are Seg 1 and 2; they are not included in the fit because they appear to be diffuse star clusters nearby the MW, but they do lie well in the DoS. The obscuration-region of  ±10° from the MW disc is given by the horizontal gray areas. In the centre, the MW disc orientation is shown by a short horizontal line, on which the position of the Sun is given as a blue dot. The near-vertical solid line shows the best fit (seen edge-on) to the satellite distribution at the given projection, the dashed lines define the region  ±1.5 × Δ_min, Δ_min being the rms-height of the thinnest DoS (Δ_min = 28.9kpc in both panels). Upper panel: an edge-on view of the DoS. Only three of the 24 satellites are outside of the dashed lines, giving N_in = 21, N_out = 3 and thus a ratio of ℛ = N_in/N_out = 7.0. Note the absence of satellites in large regions of the SDSS survey volume (upper left and right regions of the upper panel, see also Fig. 1 in Metz et al. 2009a, for the SDSS survey regions). Lower panel: a view rotated by 90°, the DoS is seen face-on. Now, only 13 satellites are close to the best-fit line, 11 are outside, resulting in ℛ = 1.2. Note that by symmetry the Southern Galactic hemisphere ought to contain about the same number of satellites as the Northern hemisphere. Thus, The Stromlo Milky Way Satellite Survey is expected to find about eight additional satellites in the Southern hemisphere.