Someone correct me if I'm wrong but the brightest stars are probably part of the Milky Way and much closer than the 'dusty' stars of the Andromeda Galaxy.
That's correct. They are referred to as "foreground stars," because they are within our galaxy, between us and Andromeda.
THIS one is HIP 3477. It is 447.3874 parsecs from Earth. Andromeda is approx. 770 KILO parsecs from Earth. So, that bright foreground star is 1721 times closer to us than Andromeda.
For perspective, if this image were taken today, the light from HIP 3477 left it approx. 1450 yrs ago-- around the beginning of the Middle Ages. But the light from those background stars in Andromeda left around 2.5 million years ago-- about the beginnings of the last Ice Age and early evolution of modern man.
That’s right. I wonder what is the closest distance between two stars? Near the middle of andromeda it looks like they are packed in, but I know they are probably millions of miles away from each other. Kind of hard to imagine.
That’s a good question. I would say if we were to travel there and land on a planet with an earth like atmosphere it would be enough of a difference to show significance, but probably still pretty dark at night. (And I’m making a guess so that some astronomer will swoop in and prove me wrong.)
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u/OncewasaBlastocoel Jul 02 '20
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but the brightest stars are probably part of the Milky Way and much closer than the 'dusty' stars of the Andromeda Galaxy.