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A cosmology question. Every single star we see at night unaided is within our own Milky Way galaxy. There is only one galaxy (I was told only if you don't count the Magellanic Clouds or the Triangulum galaxy... but the point mostly stands) capable of being seen with the naked eye, Andromeda, our closest neighboring major galaxy, which is around 2.5 million light years away (that's a whole lot of empty space). If we were in a spacecraft halfway between the Milky Way and Andromeda, what would our view be like? Would it look about the same as our own night sky, except instead of being full of stars we would be seeing galaxies all around that merely looked liked stars as their distance was so great? Would the density of these celestial bodies be about the same as we view in our own region of space, say from a vantage point somewhere in our solar system, or would it be remarkably different, whether a higher or lower density?

[Edited for correct distance to Andromeda]

WilliamCharles 8 Apr 10
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32 comments (26 - 32)

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1

Love astronomy. I woulkd like to learn much more about this topic. I don't know the answer to your question!

1

Idk? I've always loved looking at the stars at night.

0

A couple of clarifications on my info in the original post.

[hypertextbook.com]

[earthsky.org]

0

As the Cheeto Benito states, we're talking about bigly distances.

0

Putting the distances in our solar system in perspective. Even using the cursor to scroll at impossible speeds, it's far AF between the planetary bodies in our solar system.

[joshworth.com]

2

We are currently in a dust cloud that wildly obscures our night sky. Halfway between the two galaxies the night sky would be almost unimaginably awesome, with a huge part of the sky being one or the other galaxies (or both) spanning a huge portion of the sky, and countless intergalactic stars and distant galaxies visible. The night sky would be almost solid with things we could see.

1

[planetary.org]

Carl Sagan's pale blue dot quote is about as moving an observation as to our place in the cosmos as was ever spoken.

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