Are most of the stars we see actually galaxies?

All the stars we see in the night sky are in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way because it appears as a milky band of light in the sky when you see it in a really dark area.

Do the stars we see now still exist?

For the most part, the stars you see with the naked eye (that is, without a telescope) are still alive. These stars are usually no more than about 10,000 light years away, so the light we see left them about 10,000 years ago.

Can people in different parts of the world see the same stars at the same time?

No, the sky we see is not the same. As the earth rotates, the part of the sky that you can see will change – unless you are exactly on the North or South Poles, in which case the sky will appear to rotate around a point directly above your head so you don’t get to see any new stars as time goes on.

Can other galaxies see stars?

We can’t see individual stars in other galaxies. (And the only galaxy beyond our own that’s visible to the naked eye from the Northern Hemisphere is Andromeda — and you would need very dark skies and a map to find it.)

Can we actually see the Milky Way galaxy from Earth?

The Milky Way used to be visible on every clear, moonless night, everywhere in the world. Today, however, most people live in places where it’s impossible to see the Milky Way because of widespread light pollution caused by lights left on all night long.

Do the stars you see at night actually exist?

Therefore, when you look at a star, you are actually seeing what it looked like years ago. It is entirely possible that some of the stars you see tonight do not actually exist anymore. Therefore, even if a star that we see in the sky does not really exist anymore, this fact means nothing to us at the current moment.

Why can I see the same stars every night?

The stars are not fixed, but are constantly moving. If you factor out the daily arcing motion of the stars across the sky due to the earth’s rotation, you end up with a pattern of stars that seems to never change.

How come we see the same stars every night?

On any particular night of the year we see the same constellations sweeping across the sky as the night before, because the north-south polar axis on which the Earth rotates — approximately once every 24 hours [see 4th paragraph] — is relatively stable with respect to the stellar framework of space.

Why can’t we count the stars we can see?

The main reason we could never count them all because the stars we can see are not all of the stars that exist. The stars we can see are limited by the speed of light. The universe is bigger than the sphere of light that has had the time to reach the planet earth since creation.

How many stars are there in the universe?

About a couple of dozen in total make that list. So when you look up at the night you are seeing even the most distant stars in the sky as they were less than 10 millennia ago. Most are closer. But stars live much, much longer than that. The Sun will continue on as it is now for many billions of years.

How do we know how far away a star is?

If a star is 100 light years away, we are seeing it as it was 100 years ago, etc. If a star dies (goes nova), we won’t know about it for the year-equivalent of its distance in light-years. Then, one day, we’ll see a flash in the sky and we’ll know that if it is 27 light-years away, the star died 27 years ago. That’s exactly right.

Do all stars explode at the same time?

Also, not every star explodes. Some swell into red giants, blow away their outer layers, and then fade away. That process, though, takes tens of millions of years to complete at least—again, far longer than the time it takes light to reach us. Lower-mass stars don’t even do this.