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Stars too far to see
 Q: My friends and I had this discussion last weekend and we don't know the answer. As we
looked into a beautiful starlit sky, we wondered if we could only see stars from our own galaxy,
the Milky Way. Is it possible to see stars from another galaxy with the naked eye?
A: Not with the naked eye. We can see individual stars in other galaxies but we need a telescope to
spot them.
Right: [Kim Gordon, California State U at Long Beach] The Great Andromeda Galaxy
On the clearest night you can see about 2,000 stars. Of the 25 brightest stars (all visible to the naked eye), the one farthest away
(Deneb) is a mere 1,600 light years. The farthest star that we can see under the best of conditions is probably about 4,075 light years
away. The nearest galaxy to ours is about 40 times farther--170,000 light years. We can't see individual stars that far with the naked
eye.
However, we can see other galaxies-the whole thing, not individual stars. Check out "The Farthest Thing" (toward the end of the page)
in "Further Surfing" below. It tells you just where to look and how to find an extremely faint fuzzy patch in the night sky-the great
galaxy of Andromeda-over 2.5 million light years away. The light you see from that faint cloud in our night sky left Andromeda when
Lucy walked the Earth, long before modern humans existed, and a million years before any Earthling lit a fire.
(Answered by April Holladay, science correspondent, November 14, 2001)
Further Surfing:
Star Gazer: The Farthest Thing
California State U, Long Beach: M31
Kopernik: Spiral Galaxy
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