When you look into the sky at night, the majority of the stars light you see are already dead and gone, it just hasn't reached us yet...
Posted by Hal (Member # 3484) on :
Makes you feel pretty tiny, doesn`t it? I love these kind of videos. There are dozens of similar ones on Youtube...and it is cool how they always use sci-fi background music (this one uses the Bladerunner theme).
-Hal-
Posted by footjoyboy (Member # 26478) on :
Posted by Toetapper (Member # 6473) on :
It's a great video - especially in its brevity - and I can think a number of people who should see it.
Posted by Rider Aldebaran (Member # 38525) on :
Ahh, space. One of my many passions.
Posted by FX (Member # 22011) on :
quote:When you look into the sky at night, the majority of the stars light you see are already dead and gone, it just hasn't reached us yet...
This is a very romantic quote that I've heard a few times from friends or movies. However, it actually isn't quite accurate.
The majority of points of light we see at night are stars within our own Milky Way galaxy (the others are planets or the rarer outside galaxy such as Andromeda). The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years wide. So that's how long it takes the light from one side to reach the other. The average star lives to be about 10 billion years old. While it's possible that some of the the stars MAY already be dead (the result of which we would see as a supernova, I think the last one occuring 140 years ago) The vast majority are still very much alive.
Your statement DOES become more relevant when talking about stars that are outside our galaxy.
However, this is how it looked 2.5 million years ago! Posted by FX (Member # 22011) on :
Great link by the way! The universe blows my mind!
Posted by Toetapper (Member # 6473) on :
Consider this: in the photo of Andromeda, the light from the far side is 150,000 (give or take)years older than the light reaching us from the nearer side of the galaxy.
Posted by Keyfeet (Member # 27313) on :
![[Thud]](graemlins/thud.gif)