DaveMcW t1_iufcw0c wrote on October 30, 2022 at 10:11 PM

Reply to comment by [deleted] in All Space Questions thread for week of October 30, 2022 by AutoModerator

Apparent brightness follows an inverse square law. This means an object 130,000 times farther away is only 1/130000² = 0.000000000059 times as bright.

There are other issues caused by the expansion of the universe. You can't see galaxies from 13 billion years ago with a telescope like Hubble, because the galaxies are moving so fast that they are redshifted out of the visible light range. JWST is special because it can see these galaxies in infrared.

[deleted] t1_iufiv91 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 10:54 PM

[deleted]

Bensemus t1_iufoe98 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 11:34 PM

Basically not at all. The brightest things in the universe easily outshine whole galaxies despite being star size or a bit larger. Andromeda is only 4 million light years away but it’s too dim to see without a telescope. Can’t get past the inverse square law.

seanflyon t1_iuh3e3v wrote on October 31, 2022 at 8:06 AM

Your main point is correct, but you can see Andromeda with the naked eye on a clear and dark night. It is 2.5 million light years away and It is the only spiral galaxy (other than our own) visible to the naked eye.