2 ms·
So my understanding is most of the stars that fill our sky are stars inside our milky way and nearby. "The Milky Way" smudge we can see in a dark sky is the col
by floatrock 2y ago
So my understanding is most of the stars that fill our sky are stars inside our milky way and nearby. "The Milky Way" smudge we can see in a dark sky is the collective effort of all the far-off milky way stars.
I assume some of the 'stars' we can see with the naked eye are actually galaxies, but I assume that's a small percentage.
Our closest galaxy, Andromeda, appears barely as a smudge to the naked eye.
I guess my question is more about how far away from their home galaxies are these orphan stars, expressed as a percentage of a hypothetical planet's sky-cover.
eg we see the milky way as a band because we're inside the galactic plane... would these orphan planets see their home galaxy as a fainter band because they've been ejected still in the galactic plane? Would they see part of the sky covered and part of the sky blank because they're outside their home galactic plane? Are they still close enough to their home galaxy that they're still surrounded by enough stars to fill the sky, or would the star density in their skies be seasonal?
I think it would be fun to speculate on different hypothetical cultural evolutions of different kinds of night sky configurations, like "winter is when our planet's night sees our home galaxy, so winter is when the gods send their nightlumination down on us" etc.