What are The Nearest Stars?

Sometimes we can measure something and yet have no real understanding of what that measurement means. when it comes to distances in the universe, for example, we are able to measure them, but our minds cannot really grasp what that means in terms of our life.

For distances in the universe, a special unit of measurement was set up, called "the light year". A light travels about 186,000 miles a second, in one year it will travel a distance of nearly 6,000,000,000,000 (six billion) miles!

The closest star to us is Proxima Centauri, and this is about four and a third light years away. that means a distance of 26 billion miles! This star can be seen from the Southern Hemisphere. The nearest star in the Northern Hemisphere is Sirius. It is eight light years away.



Through such telescopes, stars six thousand trillion miles away can be seen. The light from these stars started out a thousand million years ago on its way to the earth!