Got it. Thanks for the detailed explanation. I know what my next research rabbit hole will be. So much interesting stuff in a place that's so unknown to us.

The people living close to the center of the galaxy must never get any sleep with how bright that region is

I can recommend this video of Andromeda in 4k

How is this possible? The light from the light house would have obliterated any light from the Milky Way? This is a composite for sure, but most probably from different places. Unless the photographer managed to switch off the lighthouse for an hour or so.

Cool nevertheless.

[removed]

> i assume in a few billion years as it gets closer it would get brighter and bigger

Bigger yes, but the surface brightness would actually stay the same (until you start to resolve individual stars). You would probably still be able to see more than you do now because the eye is better at seeing dim, large objects.

Can someone who’s good at math tell me how big andromeda would have to be in the sky before it is this bright? (ie i assume in a few billion years as it gets closer it would get brighter and bigger)

[removed]

Each star doesn't have to be a "system," per se. They can simply be massive balls of gas with rocks/ice/metals around them.

They may form into planet-sized chunks, but it's difficult to determine given their distance. Not to mention some of these stars don't live long enough to form their own systems as they can sometimes collide or spin too fast and just lose form.

Those stars may also be explosions or supernovas, but this is the limit of what I have personally read about without Googling them again.

Yeah. Andromeda has an apparent size of 3.167 by 1 degrees and this is only a portion of that. I'm pretty sure birds known for their distance sight have a wider field of view than that.

[removed]

You can see it with the naked eye under dark skies, but only the brighter core, and it's still quite faint.

Its in the constellation Andromeda. I always find it by looking from the star Mirach to mu Andromidae, and following that path to about double its length.

[removed]

[removed]

It is from the Greek, meaning "milky circle". The galaxy is a flattened disk, and we are inside it. So from our viewpoint it looks like a circle around the sky. They didn't have telescopes, so all they could see is a faint white band.

This is an all-sky view with our galaxy oriented horizontally. Sagittarius is a dwarf galaxy mostly hidden by the center of ours. It is on the other side. It is the nearest galaxy to our own, at 50,000 light years, and orbits the Milky Way. The two blobs on the lower right are the Magellanic Clouds, the next nearest, and also orbit the Milky Way. They are about 3 times farther, and much larger than the Sagittarius dwarf. Both will end up merged with the Milky Way eventually.

[removed]

Oh dammit. That would be so cool.

I’m ashamed for not knowing, but where would I find it in the sky? In relation to the more obvious constellations?

Wait really? I'm so used to thinking about galactic level events happening over millions or billions of years. Had not expected that such a change could be on the timeline of humanity.

[removed]

[removed]

To the human scale, by the most important measures, the universe has always existed.

Yes, if you can get far enough away from urban areas, haze, and light pollution.

When I was younger I used to get away to extremely rural areas in the summer and lay in the middle of a back road on the warm asphalt, staring at the sky for hours. After my eyes adjusted, I could see the Milky Way and various gaseous formations. I haven't seen them in years now, it makes me really sad.

[removed]

[removed]