system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When staring at stars in the night sky, where are they from? Are they only local to our milky way?

I have been out to the country to see the Milky Way pass over head. So I understand that those stars in that band passing over head belong to the Milky way, but what about the other 90% of the sky? In every direction there is a star or spec of light to stare at. Where are these stars? How far away are they? 


I realize thats difficult to answer but what I am really asking is, am I only looking at the milky way when I look up or are those small flickers of light traveling from other galaxies? It may be a simple answer but its one of those things I was never told or taught, and google didnt give me the best results.
gpt
Pretty much all in the milky way. The stripe you see across the sky is what you see when you look towards the center of the galaxy. The other stars are inclined above or below that direction. There aren't that many extragalactic objects you can see without a telescope (I think just Andromeda?)