I agree. I keep whirling my mouse wheel instinctively and I still can't see the whole galaxy. My hand/eye refuses to believe I can't do that and keeps trying. It is sort of like running into a wall suddenly in the dark, well, less physically painful, but still mentally jarring.
I have envisioned the zoom going up one more level to a minimap display format filling the main map window. I like the minimap format and think it would be even more useful with more screen real estate. It would be especially useful with all the filters about trade routes, zones of influence, etc.
Then we can get the zoom in function to get us all the way down to graphical display of the improvement layout! I want to be able to tell which factories are upgraded and which are not! 