Closest Star and Galaxy

Space is the Place

-The closest star is Proxima Centauri, at only 4.2 light years away.
-The closest galaxy is the Canis Major Dwarf galaxy, at 25,000 light years.
and
-The closest spiral galaxy is Andromeda, at 2.5 million light years.

Andromeda has a few hundred billion stars, like our Milky Way.
Canis Major, which is irregularly shaped, has around 1 billion stars.

Get this:
One light year is about 5.88 trillion miles.

So, by my calculations, Proxima Centauri is 24.696 trillion miles.
(24,696,000,000,000)
Canis Major Dwarf galaxy is 25k x 5.88t, or 147,000 trillion miles.
(147,000,000,000,000,000)
And Andromeda is about 15 million trillion miles., which is:
(14,700,000,000,000,000,000 miles away)

Some TED astronomy talk, I remember, said, from the most average location in the (known) universe, the sky is black, meaning you can't see any stars, because they're so far away. Wow.

Andromeda, from earth, is a fuzzy patch of light, when seen through a pair of quality binoculars.

I sure hope future space travel has some fun things to do inflight, for the folks on board.

"there's a place in the stars...for a new ghetto" -Oingo Boingo

-The diameter of the known universe is 93 billion light years.
That's546.84 billion trillion miles.
That's
546,840,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.

"to infinity and beyond" -Buzz Lightyear