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The light fans out the further it travels, because the angles just drift further apart.
The higher the distance, the higher is the chance of something else getting in the way. In particular, clouds of gas or dust can dim the star without blocking it completely.
I guess, the following isn’t technically relevant here, but:
The space in the universe expands for unknown reasons. When light travels larger distances through this expanding space, its wavelength is stretched as well. This causes the light color to shift towards red, then infrared, then microwave radiation. We can’t see the latter two anymore, so they appear dark.
I assume, it’s not relevant here, because otherwise the stars would appear red. Although, I don’t know, if maybe Rayleigh Scattering counteracts that?
You can’t see millions of light years without a telescope. If you could the night sky would be white not black. Or more likely a weird shade of red.
The Andromeda galaxy can be seen with the naked eye. But as a fuzzy blur, though.
Every so often, someone wishes upon Andromeda and accidentally magnifies the effect of the wish by a factor of about 10^12. It’s a hazard.
Barely, and It’s one of the largest known galaxies in existence.
What do you mean barely? It is brighter than the Orion nebula and that one is pretty easy to see.
Andromeda has an apparent magnitude of 3.4 while the Orion nebula has an apparent magnitude of 4…
Lol, that scale is inverse. Venus is is -4
Just like THAC0. Was Gary Gygax an astronomer?
Right… I didn’t type out my main point, oops. I was going to add neither are considered easy to see.
And even harder to see from a city, right? From outside it is not.
I can see like Venus, Jupiter, and maybe 12 stars in my city.
Why you can’t see distant stars:
I guess, the following isn’t technically relevant here, but:
I assume, it’s not relevant here, because otherwise the stars would appear red. Although, I don’t know, if maybe Rayleigh Scattering counteracts that?
But yeah, there’s a similar paradox where this redshift actually becomes relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers’_paradox
Correct. The stars you can see with your eye are mostly all too close by to have a strong red shift.