Re: Stars visible with naked eye

In article <fpj7o5$lj7$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Landy <noone@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Landy" <noone@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"p4o2" <p4o2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:417f851d-7763-4e45-a47a-ffebdb779d1e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
How many of the stars visible with the naked eye are in our milky way?
I think maybe they all are?

Ah, no. Our own Sun would become invisible to the naked eye at about
20-30 light years distance. I would imagine we'd be lucky to see 1% of
them.
cheers
Bill

Just realized I misread the question. I thought I was answering "are all
the stars in the milky way visible to the naked eye"

I misread the question too...... :-O

Almost all naked-eye stars are within our own galaxy. I know of only
two exceptions:

S Andromedae - that star was a supernova within M31 (the Andromeda
galaxy) which briefly reached magnitude 6 in 1885. Nobody is known
to actually have seen it with the naked eye, but it was briefly bright
enough to reach naked-eye visibility.

SN 1987A - this was another supernova, this time in the Large Magellanic
Cloud. It peaked at magnitude 3, and was seen with the naked eye by
many people.

So, apart from occasional supernovae in the most nearby galaxies, all
naked-eye stars reside in our own galaxy.




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e-mail: pausch at stjarnhimlen dot se
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