Fun science fact about the sky

Fun science fact about the sky: did you know that it has several huge galaxies in it? I don’t mean the universe, everybody knows there are zillions (that’s a technical term) of galaxies out there.  I mean the sky. The Andromeda Galaxy, which is the one that stands in for our own galaxy in probably every “You are here” T-shirt and poster you’ve ever seen, covers 190′ x 60′ of sky. What does that mean? Well the moon covers about 30′ of sky, so…

Andromeda Galaxy with moon inset to show relative size

You just can’t see it like that because it’s too dim! But I still love mentally picturing it.

The scene at the end of The Empire Strikes Back is actually similar to our own sky – it’s just that the galaxy they’re looking at would also be too dim to show up like that, even from a spacecraft:

C-3PO, R2D2, Luke, and Leia looking out the window of a spacecraft at a galaxy at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.

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