RE: Science Porn
November 27, 2014 at 12:47 am
(This post was last modified: November 27, 2014 at 12:51 am by Anomalocaris.)
(November 26, 2014 at 11:04 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: More fun with scales:
That's far from accurate. The furthest stars easily visible to the naked eye even in relatively light polluted areas like Los angeles are those of the andromeda Galaxy 2.5 million light years away, or a distance equal to about 20 times the diameter of a typical large spiral galaxy implied here. Admittedly I am talking about seeing a collection of stars, not resolving a single star.
The furthest single star that can be resolved by the naked eye would be blue supergiants. These can be seen out to about 5000 light years. So a circle encompassing the further individual stars visible to the naked eye would still be 1/10 the diameter of a typical large spiral galaxy - ie far larger relative to the Galaxy than the yellow circle in the picture.