Traveling towards Andromeda?

Question

I'm taking an introductory astronomy course and well the professor was discussing that when we look at Andromeda we're actually seeing what it looked like 2.5 million years ago because of the time it takes for light to reach Earth. Now to my question, if it were possible to travel fast enough towards Andromeda what would I see? Would it be a movie-like view? This is probably a dumb question, but oh well lol

Thanks for answering! :-)

Answer 1

Yes, you would see a fast-forward view of Andromeda, but you'd have to be going pretty fast--- at Relativistic speeds.



At nearly the speed of light, you would see that fast-forward movie, and the closer to c you traveled, the shorter the trip. You could, for instance, find a speed nearly c at which it only took 90 minutes to get there in your frame of reference, the duration of a feature length movie.



Of course, since you're going at nearly c, the visible light from Andromeda will be blueshifted into the hard gamma ray, and it will fry you. If you manage to build your spacecraft out of, say, 100 yard-thick lead walls to protect yourself from this, you will also see all sorts of weird things going on, including abberation which will cause the view in front of you to take up just a tiny, tiny spot in the middle of your field of view, with most of your forward field of view actually composed of things you have already passed.

Answer 2

how fast is "fast enough"?



the fastest you can travel is just under the speed of light, and realistically, you could never even get very close to that... MAYBE 0.4c with some kind of super-duper drive like that loon Burkhard Heim said is possible, before he decided to live in a cave.



at that speed the Andromeda Galaxy would look normal.

Answer 3

Hi. Most galaxies have about 1 supernova per century. You would see the supernovae at a rate determined by your speed. In 2.5 million years there should be several hundred that you would see.

Answer 4

it would take 2,5 million years to see it go from a point of light to being in it.. at light speed, if your marginaly slower than the time only gets longer



if you took only one picture a year you would have a very boring movie.

maybe a picture a decade or somethin...

Answer 5

You are getting into relativity, and that's all screwy!



You'll have to take into account Time Dilation.



And the fact that you will be traveling at the speed of light towards light already traveling towards you at the speed of light meaning it will appear to travel at twice the speed of light, which is impossible given the laws of relativity.



Screw it, yeah, it will look like you are traveling at Warp!

Answer 6

Well, I suppose you would see the evolution of the star in fast forward.