The circle in the sky highlights one of the furthest objects the human eye can see without optical aid. The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) lies 2.5 million light-years away and requires dark moonless skies far from city lights and dark adapted pupils. When you see the light from this approaching spiral galaxy you're looking at photons that took 2.5 million years to arrive at the Earth and no Homo Sapiens when it left on it's journey to your eye and registered as an image in your 3lb mass of almost 90 billion neurons.
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Yes, it is a lovely challenge in some ways, where I live, I get about one night a month when the conditions are good enough for a good view of it.
Our night sky is not bad, but far from pitch black. I had some friends down from the city once and I took them on a walk to the pub. It was a good night and they were stunned by the sky, especially the Milky Way which they had never seen before. Trying to add something for their amusement, I told Mary that the ancient Egyptians though that it was shaped like a naked lady, but that I can not see it, and think that some people see naked ladies everywhere, like faces in the forest. But Mary was delighted and swore she could see her plainly. OH well.
Fernapple
Level 9
Feb 25, 2021
2
Neat, but only in the southern hemisphere? Of the 6,000 or so individual stars we can see in the sky with our naked eye, most are within a few hundred LYs, the furthest like 40K LY. We are actually in kind of a dusty area of the Milky Way.
Druvius
Level 8
Feb 24, 2021
1
Andromeda is northern hemisphere and you might be confusing the Andromeda galaxy with the Small & Large Magellanic clouds (satellite galaxies of the milky way) only visible from the southern hemisphere as both are visible to the eye and the Small Magellanic cloud is almost 200,000 lya, but nothing compared to the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and even M33 can be seen under very dark skies and even further at 2.7 million lya. Some very keen eyed amateur astronomers have even reported seeing the two galaxies of M81 & M82 in Ursa Major at 11 million lya, but I've been observing a long time and I sure couldn't see them when younger with 20/20 vision and a fully dilated 7mm pupil and needed binoculars. You're essentially correct as most of the stars we see are nearby on an astronomical scale with the exception of some bright stars like Deneb in Cygnus at 2,600 lya and with V762 Cassiopeia at over 16,000 lya and its brightness is magnitude 5.8 and visible to the naked eye, but is a variable star that changes brightness over time and very dim. There are also some very bright nebulae like the Lagoon nebula (M8) at over 4,000 lya and some bright globular clusters like Omega Centauri at almost 16,000 lya that are visible to the the dark adapted naked eye from magnitude 6+ skies.
@StellarAmor75 All correct and the photo shows the northern milky way in Perseus and Cassiopeia
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@starwatcher-al Yes, and my favorite area of the sky on Aug. 12th-13th and great open clusters for my Fujinon binos.
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