Have you ever thought that the beautiful twinkling stars in the night are how much far from us? And answer for this is that it is very much away from our planet. The distance of the stars are not measured in meters or kilometers as we measure all the distances in kilometers but we measure their distance by the time taken by the light from the stars to reach the earth. Light is the fastest thing that runs over the universe. It moves with the speed of 186000 miles per second. It takes only two seconds to reach from the moon to the earth and 8.3 minutes from sun to earth.
The stars that are visible to our eyes can be dozens to hundred light years away from our earth. So the light that reaches to our eyes at a particular time has left the star so many years ago. It sounds amazing. The nearest star is Alpha Centouri which is 4.3 light years away from the earth and the farthest star which is visible to our naked eye is 1000 light years away from our planet.
Sun is also a star but it glows much more than the other because the other stars are too far from us so their light gets dim when it reaches to our eyes. Moreover some stars that are too far shine 50,000 times the light of sun and are visible to our eyes and some close stars emit less than the thousandth part of sun’s light and are not visible to our naked eyes and we require a telescope for its vision.
When this light passes through the earth atmosphere it bends in its path because of temperature, density etc. and appears as twinkling to our eyes but in actual they emit a steady light. If we observe the stars from the space then we can notice this.
