Actually, the main things telescopes do is not magnify (especially when looking at Messier objects), but provide a large area for collecting light. Andromeda is several times larger than the full Moon - magnification is not even necessary, but you need a bigger area to collect photons than the 7 mm or so that your pupil has by itself.
I’m not sure, but I don’t think that being closer to Andromeda would help to make it brighter, as in density of the brightness. I know overall it would be brighter because it would appear larger, but the density should be the same.
Don’t mind me, I’ve just been gobsmacked to learn that the Andromeda galaxy has an apparent size larger than the full Moon. But it’s obvious why we don’t see it; we barely see the individual stars of the Milky Way, and they’re way closer.
There’d be an interstellar stock market crash when the cowardly two-headed aliens who are the only ones who know how to make invulnerable spaceship hulls fled the galaxy at STL speed, even though the light from the explosion was thirty thousand years away.
And it would seem that my optical astronomy colleagues were either flat out lying, or deluding themselves. Whilst it might be possible, with a good amateur telescope, to see something more than a dirty smudge of light, you’ll be hard pressed to make out arms. I apologise for my misinformation.
Nothing to worry about? You’re thinking on way too short a time scale here.
When galaxies collide, they basically scatter both their contents through intergalactic space. This includes all those nice dust clouds and regions of new star formation – they’d get so dispersed that practically no new stars would form out of the contents of the two galaxies for the rest of eternity.
No new stars. That means no new planets, no new life forms, no new anything. When our sun burns out, there won’t be a younger sun for us to migrate our civilization to, because no new suns would have formed. And even if they had, our sun would have been flung so far away from the rest of the stars in the former Milky Way that interstellar travel would be nigh-on impossible.
Your “nothing to worry about” galactic collision is going to spell the end of civilization!
Perhaps with naked eye viewing. However, with some good photography skills, you can take a picture that will clearly show its structure with a relatively modest scope (I mean, I’m not talking about a 2-inch junk scope or anything.) You can see more with the camera than with the eye, at least in some respects.
