Star Gazers

Hey, Stargazers!

Do you know what the furthest thing in space that you can see from Earth with just your naked eye?

It's not a planet or even a nebula.

It's a whole other galaxy.

The Andromeda Galaxy is the farthest object in the night sky that we can see unaided.

This galaxy is the closest large spiral galaxy to ours and it's the brightest external galaxy that you can see.

At one time, the Andromeda Galaxy was actually called the Great Andromeda Nebula.

See, astronomers thought that this patch of light was composed of like glowing gases or maybe it was like a solar system that was in the process of forming.

It wasn't until the 20th century that Edwin Hubble determined that Andromeda was none of those things.

It was another galaxy that was outside the bounds of the Milky Way and compared to the Milky Way, by the way, Andromeda is huge.

We in the Milky Way are estimated to have like 100 billion to 400 billion stars.

That's a lot, but the Andromeda Galaxy boasts around 1 trillion stars.

On a clear night, you can see the Andromeda Galaxy with just your own eyeballs even though it's two and a half million light years away.

That light was emitted before humans even evolved on this planet.

That's amazing!

Use your highly evolved eyes and keep looking up!