Milky Way, Stars Recently, astronomers discovered the most distant Milky Way stars to date, at distances of 775,000 and 900,000 light-years, respectively. How can these two stars be in the Milky Way if our galaxy is 120,000 light-years across?
Observing In a location far from city lights, on a night of good seeing, what percentage of stars visible to the naked eye is beyond our galaxy?
Observing, The Sun A while back, I saw a rainbow circle about 40° in diameter around the Sun. The inside of the circle was darker. I’d like to know why the circle was there, and what math explanation there is to address its huge size. It looked like a cap was taken off the atmosphere and you could peer into the universe.