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In Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series, there is a planet named Terminus which is believed to be the planet farthest from the galactic center.

There are almost no visible stars in its sky, only the huge lens of the Milky Way galaxy

But what would we really see if we look at the opposite side from the galactic center (without a telescope or binoculars)? Would we see a black sky or a sky full of galaxies?

Waffle's Crazy Peanut
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DavRob60
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2 Answers2

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Asimov's description is pretty much correct. There aren't many stars out there, so the night sky away from the galactic disk would be fairly dark. Toward the galaxy you you have an edge on view of the galactic disk.

As for a sky full of galaxies, you might see a few but probably not. They are intrinsically very faint and moving a few tens of thousands of light years wouldn't do much to make them closer and therefore brighter. The sky background would be lower so you might be able to see a few more but most likely, to the unaided eye it wouldn't be much different.

So if you looked away from the galactic center, there would be a very darks sky with only a few stars and a few faint smudges just on the edge of detectability for your peripherial vision.

dagorym
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While true that you wouldn't see many galaxies with the naked eye (about as many as we can from earth), this sort of location would be an astronomer's paradise. You could study other galaxies without the interference of local stars, gas, and other impeding influences. You would be able to get a much more complete count of distant galaxies than we can from earth (for what it's worth). For the Hubble Deep-field images for example, we have to take one small pinpoint between stars that is away from the main plane of the galaxy. From your theoretical viewpoint however, we could take individual images of a much wider field of view, in practically any direction, and you would never have to worry about saturation from very bright foreground stars.

You'd still need a space telescope to make that happen of course for the extra-long exposures necessary, unless your planet just happens to be tidally locked with your star. :)

Ernie
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