Starry Night This Week

Each week most PBS stations air "Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer", the world's first and only weekly TV series on naked-eye astronomy. The Starry Night images on this page illustrate the show for the week of Monday October 28, 2002. You can view the complete show script, or watch a RealPlayer video of the show.

How To Look Back In Time Over Two Million Years!

The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is the Andromeda Galaxy. Andromeda was once thought to be a nebula inside our galaxy, but in 1923, astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that it lies outside the Milky Way. The Andromeda Galaxy is now thought to be about 2.9 million light years away. It is over 150 000 light years across, and has a mass 1.2 trillion times that of our sun. This view shows the sky at 8:00 PM EST from mid-northern latitudes.

To locate the Andromeda Galaxy, start by finding the Square of Pegasus. The 'top left' star in the square is called Alpheratz. From Alpheratz count two bright stars to the left, then two fainter stars up. The Andromeda Galaxy is just above the second faint star and to the right.