The Milky way is just 100,000 light year wide (diameter). Our sun is 26,000 light years from the center. The bulge of the disk at the center protudes 12,000 light years either side. The Milky way contains at least 250 billion stars, perhaps over 1 trillion.
By contrast the galaxy Andromeda (similar size of Milky Way) is 2.2 million light years away but it is on a collicion course closing at 8,000 km per hour. Hence a collision between the galaxies will be in about 3 billion years which as far as I can gather given the curent dawdle will be just after you are likely to arrive at Falmouth (I’ve estimated 6 June 3,000,002,005).
Polaris, Pleaides and Orion are certainly part of the Milky Way and deduce that all constellations, close etc. nebulae are.that what we see beyond our galaxies are other galaxies with bugger all in between except gas, dust, dark matter, energy and gravitational fileds
We have a gigantic black hole at the center of the galaxy so don’t sail too close to the edge of the Earth.
The logs ramblings can be cryptic, so we have added: