Would life on the edge of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy see the whole Milky Way in the night sky?

Here's an intriguing thought - I think so anyway. Let's suppose for a minute that there's an Earth-like planet with sentient life orbiting a star near the edge of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy. Specifically, it would need to be on the side nearest the Milky Way.

When the inhabitants of this world look up at the sky at night, if they're looking in the direction of their own galaxy, I'd assume that they'd see a similar view to what we do (with the naked eye) - a milky, light shape in the sky.

But if they were facing the Milky Way, would they see one huge, well-defined spiral galaxy sitting in the sky?

I've chosen this galaxy specifically because I suspect it might be close enough (~50,000 light years from the core of the Milky Way, with the Milky Way ~100+ light years in diameter) that this is what you would see. What I'm not sure of is if this would really be the case in the real world (hence the hard-science tag)

For the purposes of this question, assume that the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy is at a point in its orbit where it is passing directly over the Milky Way's galactic pole.

edit: I've changed the tag from "hard science" to "science based" after having looked at the descriptions of these two tags

posted almost 7 years ago

danl‭

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