Space Forum / Astronomy / September 2006

Welcome to the awesome world of Astronomy, as for your question, most of the
stars you see are within the Milkway Galaxy, BUT, at this time of year if
you are in a dark area, and you have a even a simple star map you can maybe
see M-31 the Andromeda Galaxy, which by normal eyesith is just a dim fussy
spot up there, but it's only about 2.5 million lightyears away from us too.
If you can get a pair of bino's, say 10 x 50's to start with, then you can
see it a bit better. In fact with a pair of bino's you can start to learn
the sky and depending on the time of year, you'll learn that we will see
other parts of our galaxy and you'll be able to see some of the sights. Then
someday you can move up to a Telescope and then the door will open even
wider.

If your skies are dark enough to see the Andromeda galaxy, you are
looking beyond the Milky Way.  If you go far enough south to see the
two Magellanic Clouds, you are looking beyond the Milky Way.

Telescopes took pictures of galaxies beyond the Milky Way long before
the Hubble telescope, or any other man made object, was put in orbit.

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Others have mentioned the M31 (AKA the Great Andromeda Galaxy) and the
Magellanic Clouds (a pair of much closer dwarf galaxies), which are
naked-eye objects under decent observing conditions. Given very dark
skies, a few more nearish galaxies are visible with binoculars.

However, almost all the individual stars you can see, even with a small
to medium-sized telescope, are in our own Galaxy. The only exceptions
are supernovae, which are often bright enough to be seen many millions
of light-years away. (For comparison, the Milky Way is a couple hundred
thousand LY across.)

Yes, and very well. The largest ground-based telescopes are very large
indeed--sometimes comprising two separate instruments, like a giant pair
of binoculars--gathering a great deal of light and therefore capable of
detecting extremely faint objects. Moreover modern "adaptive optics" and
image-processing can compensate for atmospheric distortions to a fair
extent.