How will the pattern of stars in the milky way change over time?

[alemsalem]

how will the pattern of stars in the milky way change as the galaxy rotates, will they be rotated in some direction or drifted or something?
and what is the timescale for that to happen?

Thanks!

 

[mfb]

The relative motion of nearby stars (so nearly everything you can see in the sky) is nearly random. They will head towards some random fixed point in the sky, and get dimmer, while other stars come from some random position and get brighter. Typical relative velocities are ~50km/s or ~2 light years per 10000 years. For stars 100 light years away (see the brightest stars), this gives a timescale of ~500,000 years until they are at completely different positions. Some stars are much closer, and some stars are quicker, so they moved by a visible amount (for the naked eye) in the last ~2000 years. 61 Cygni, for example, is visible to the naked eye and moves with ~5arcseconds per year or 1° in ~700 years. This is two times the diameter of the moon.

 

[schaefera]

Eventually, due to an accelerating expansion of the universe, it will be impossible to see any stars!

 

[Damo ET]

Eventually, due to an accelerating expansion of the universe, it will be impossible to see any stars!

That is not correct. Our local group of galaxies are gravitationally bound and the expansion of the universe does not effect the stars contained within them.




Damo

 

[mfb]

It would need a big rip to pull our galaxy apart*, and there are no signs of this. But even if with a big rip, our sun will reach the end of its life long before that. All other stars won't live forever either.

*well, the collision with Andromeda in ~4 billion years will significantly change its shape as well.

 

[Astronuc]

how will the pattern of stars in the milky way change as the galaxy rotates, will they be rotated in some direction or drifted or something?
and what is the timescale for that to happen?

Thanks!

One would need to find the proper motion components of many stars.

Here are insights.

. . . .
The highest proper motion of any star is that of the nearby Barnard's Star with a value of 10.3"/yr. It has a radial velocity of 108 km/s towards us and a transverse velocity of 88 km/s. This means it is moving closer to us and will be at its closest in 12,000 A.D.

. . . .

http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au/education/senior/astrophysics/proper_motion.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_motion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_kinematics

http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit1/motions.html
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast122/lectures/lec08.html
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/motion/proper.html
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/Academics/Astr222/Galaxy/Kinematics/solarmotion.html

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/star-catalog/ppm.html

Atlas of stars - http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html

 

[schaefera]

Ah yes, but even introductory books like Brian Greene explain that it isn't everything moving randomly, but space itself is expanding. So the gravitational boundedness only matters so long before the space between all of us expands and we can see no stars locally either.

A more scientific source: http://smithsonianscience.org/2011/04/big-bang-model/

 

[mfb]

Ah yes, but even introductory books like Brian Greene explain that it isn't everything moving randomly, but space itself is expanding.

This is irrelevant on the scale of our galaxy.

So the gravitational boundedness only matters so long before the space between all of us expands and we can see no stars locally either.

The milky way does not expand.

A more scientific source: http://smithsonianscience.org/2011/04/big-bang-model/

This just confirms that you cannot measure expansion of the universe within a galaxy - you need stars which get ejected so quick and travel so far away that they are not bound to the galaxy any more.
See Astronuc's links for scientific sources.

 

[Damo ET]

Ah yes, but even introductory books like Brian Greene explain that it isn't everything moving randomly, but space itself is expanding. So the gravitational boundedness only matters so long before the space between all of us expands and we can see no stars locally either.

A more scientific source: http://smithsonianscience.org/2011/04/big-bang-model/

If you re-read that source, it states that after the merger of The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies (he didn't bother to name the other galaxies in our local group as they are much smaller in comparison, but they will merge with the big 2 also), "The universe’s ever-accelerating expansion will send all other galaxies rushing beyond our “cosmic horizon,” sending them forever out of view."
Not our local group!



Damo