i have seen pictures where there are or it seems that there are stars outside the galaxy off by themselves.now if my eyes are not deceiving me how is that they are by themselves and is it possible for stars to be born off in the distance all alone. if so how would that be,what kind of actions would cause this and will they always be by themselves or do they gravitate towards the closest galaxies near by. need some understanding as this question was posed to me . thanks - have a nice day

as far as i am aware you cant see any stars that our not in our galaxy with the naked eye

stars can be flung out of their parent galaxy

but that is not what you are seeing

im sure you will get a better answer soon bit rushed at present..


xxx

:P

Maybe you're seeing photos in which the camera/scope was aimed at a galaxy but nearby stars (relatively speaking) were captured in the image frame. See this picture of M31 for example:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ima...M31_hallas.jpg

Any individual star in that image lies within the Milky Way and between the camera and M31. An individual star sitting about 1 million light years away (roughly half the distance to M31) would be difficult to resolve in an image although maybe not impossible; Edwin Hubble was able to resolve Cepheid variable stars within M31, which helped him to calculate the distance between the Milky Way and M31. Still there are darn few stars in that big void between us and M31.

As damian1727 said, stars can be flung from a galaxy, such as when two galaxies collide.

For fun, google the phrase "star formation between galaxies".

Any stars appearing in photographs showing external galaxies but appearing to not be in those galaxies are almost certainly inside our own galaxy. However, some of them could conceivably have been flung outside our galaxy through gravitational interaction with other stars in our galaxy.