Source: A fairly popular astronomy guy on TikTok/YT
In: Planetary Science
You’d basically be in the ultimate void where there’s no light or stuff around to see, just endless darkness.
Light is emitted as little particles called photons. Those photons spread out as they travel. If you are far enough from a Light source, the photons will be so spread out that they will miss you entirely.
We can see Andromeda from the Milky Way. So it makes sense that you’d be able to see both galaxies if you were between them in deep space. But there probably are regions between galaxies or galaxy clusters that are so distant and the photons are so spread out that you will not see them at all.
(Edited to include galaxy corrections, thanks commenters)
This is with the naked eye, I’m assuming?
Galaxies are really big and bright, but space is even bigger.
With the naked eye, in a dark region of earth, we can see a few galaxies, such as the Andromeda (our closest neighbor), the Triangulum, and some dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way (our galaxy).
But galaxies tend to cluster together, leaving voids with very few galaxies, and there are certainly spaces you could find in the universe where *all* the galaxies are farther away than the visible ones is from us, too far for any to be visible with the naked eye.
On the other hand, if your spot “between the galaxies” is say right between Andromeda and our galaxy, the Milky Way, you should be able to see both of them.
Light is just particles leaving a light source and bouncing off of things. Different colors of light are bounced off of different objects because some objects absorb more light. Those bounce backs to your eyes or a camera will recognize the object from that light.
In deep space things are too far from the light source for the light particles to hit everything enough to bounce back and for you to see it. Meaning you cant see anything around you. It’s like being in a super dark room.
Look up Olbers’s Paradox. I’m not knowledgeable enough to explain it. Maybe someone here could explain it gooder than this neanderthal.
The nearest galaxy to us (not counting dwarf galaxies like the Magellan clouds) is Andromeda.
Andromeda is visible to the naked eye. Barely.
It looks more like just another star or a tiny smear if you look closely.
That is what you would see if you were out in the intergalactic void.
One or maybe two tiny smudges in an otherwise empty sky.
If you were really unlucky you would see nothing at all.
The local group of galaxies is fairly densely populated with galaxies. In other places galaxies can be far further apart.
The space between galaxies and between galaxy groups is never completely empty, but distances can be so big that a lone star or even a loan galaxy can be easily lost in the distance.
Of course with a telescope you could see more if you were close enough.
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