2006-06-21 16:53:17 · 4 answers · asked by Brianman3 3 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is the most distant object easily seen with the naked eye. In a very dark sky, you may be able to see M33, which may be 3 million light years distant.
It's a little more difficult to determine what is the most distant individual star that can be seen with the naked eye, as it is apt to be some faint, nondescript star. Also, it is difficult to accurately determine the distance to a single star at distances over 1500 light years. P Cygni, a fifth magnitude star in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan or Northern Cross) is a very luminous star possibly 6000 light years away. This is probably a reasonable approximation of how far away a star can be seen. Note that this is still in our Milky Way Galaxy, which is around 100,000 light years in diameter. However, you might be able to see a supernova in a nearby galaxy. SN1987A in the large Magellanic Cloud reached third magnitude, and it was fairly dim for a supernova. (About magnitudes: six is about the dimmest visible, smaller numbers are brighter. The brightest star, Sirius is -1.)
2006-06-21 17:34:24 · answer #1 · answered by injanier 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Guys, understand the question first. Andromeda is a galaxy, not a star. It might have million/trillion stars in it, but they arent visible. So the answer should be the name of a star, and not a name of galaxy.
Because the farthest one might be very faint, it might havnet been named yet. It would be recognized by its constellation instead or would have a crappy name like M98757876&^%^*.
2006-06-22 06:00:08 · answer #2 · answered by Whatever 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Andromeda Galaxy is the farthest visible object at 2.5 million light years
2006-06-21 23:59:11 · answer #3 · answered by hpgallard 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
the Andromeda galaxy found in the constellation Orion is ... hmmmm ... probably a million light years away
(I'm guessing here, since our own galaxy is maybe 30,000 light years across, andI imagine that 33 times that number is a reasonable distance to the closest galaxy ...
so a million light years is 6 trillion - million miles away ...
which is 6x10^18 miles away
2006-06-21 23:58:45 · answer #4 · answered by atheistforthebirthofjesus 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋