Why don't galaxies move when we look at them?

Question

I'm aware of the fact that galaxies are in motion, but why is it that we don't see them as moving? As in you look through a telescope, find a galaxy, and it looks like its just sitting there. (note: i've never actually seen a galaxy through a telescope, ARE they actually moving when you look at them? i'm almost certain there not, but I don't want to sound like an idiot if i'm wrong on the whole thing.)


and since our galaxy is in motion, why doesn't our view of "extragalactic" objects change as our system moves and changes position through the milky way?

Answer 1

You have no concept of the size of space.

Even the stars do not appear to move, yet they are all moving.

You might see a star change location if you live 100 years. It took hundreds of years of refining instruments before even the movement of the nearest stars could be measured. This was only achieved in the 19th century, several hundred years after the invention of the telescope.

Galaxies are millions of times further away than the stars you see in the sky. Yo could watch them for thousands of years and not see any movement.

You need to get the scale of things into your head.

Answer 2

OK when your in an airplane you know you moving, but if you look out the window it seems as if you are suspended in place. This is because such a small thing is being compare to a much larger. I don't really know how to explain this any better, but it just makes sense. And with the aid of lapse photography we can see galaxies move. Lapse photography is taking an image of a region and taking another image from the same perspective after some time goes by.

Answer 3

Galaxies are huge! It takes 200 million years for our sun to go around our galaxy once. You would see motion if you watched a galaxy over the course of a few million years, but in the span of a human lifetime you would see no proper motion. Now we can see radial (towards and away) motion in galaxies by looking at the Doppler shift in the spectral features of a galaxy.

Answer 4

They are so far away, they don't look like they are moving. The moving galaxies you see on TV are someone's conception of a speeded-up "near" galaxy.

Over the course of 1000s of years, our view of galactic objects, anyway, changes. You can find examples of this especially in Mayan research, where they talk about how star positions have changed in the skies over the years. I think Egyptian research, too, touches on this.

Think of it this way, if you see a car go past you right under your nose at 30 mph, it seems like it's going very, very fast. But if you see the same car five or six miles away, going 30 mph, it doesn't look so fast. Now, think about seeing that car a billion, billion miles away -- if you could. It probably wouldn't look like it wasn't moving at all.

Hope that helps with the perspective.

Answer 5

Those distant galaxies are simply too far away for us to notice any changes in their positions. Imagine you're in a car speeding down the road at 70 mph. You pass two very high radio towers. One tower is right next to the road, the other is one mile away from the road. The nearby tower zips by very quickly, while the more distant one goes by more slowly. Same thing is true for distant galaxies we see, as well as Earth's motion around our galaxy.

Answer 6

because the galaxy is soo far away. if u stand a mile away from a pop can, and have someone move it an inch, u cant tell it moves. well its the same thing with galaxies.

Answer 7

When your driving down the highway, you are with cars, but the cars with you are moving very fast, but they seem to be still... The distances are so far in space that movement is difficult to see.

Answer 8

it has to do with the arc of the circle u can see with your eye and how much of that arc is covered by it's motion.

Answer 9

just try this link