It takes millions of years for the light of a distant star to reach Earth, even traveling at lightspeed. When I look at the night sky, I often wonder how many of those stars up there still actually exist. Some of them may have gone nova and expired millions of years ago, and their light is just now reaching our eyes. Something to think about.
Everything that you can see as a star is closer that 1000 light years...maybe less.
The Milky Way, which you can’t see as individual stars, 30,000 to 50,000 lys.
The furthest you can easily see is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy, is 2 million lys, M33 (the Pinwheel) is just a little further, but, you have to have a dark sky and very good eyes to see it.
That’s as far back as we can see naked eye. Beyond that, you would need a good pair of binoculars, a telescope and then a telescope with a camera, to see.
The only KNOWN star that we can see here in North America that is close to going, is Betelgeuse, and it still may be 10,000 years or more from going (best guess out there right now).
In the tropics and Southern Hemisphere, you can see Eta Carena(sp?), which is VERY unstable, and could go any time. VERY interesting star there.