How would the sun look if we viewed it from a relatively distant star system?

Question

Would the constellations seen from earth look different?

Answer 1

Ar ten parsecs away (32 light years away) the Sun would look like a very ordinary 5th magnitude star. Dimmer than the apparent magnitude of Ganymede as seen from Earth. i.e. the Absolute Magnitude of the Sun is about 4.8.

Yet its apparent magnitude (when 8 light minutes away) is - 26.7. As every 5 magnitudes means a 100-fold change in brightness, a change in 31.5 magnitudes (from -26.7 to 4.8) means that the Sun would be about 5 x 10^-12 dimmer when viewed from 10 parsecs away than it looks at the moment.

If we viewed the sky from a vantage point 32 light years away the constellations would not look signficantly different. The galaxy is 100,000 light years across and that is a tiny fraction of that distance

But if we looked at the sky from a point outside of the Milky Way or outside the Local Group of galaxies, we would see other stars not these ones, as the ones we know are all our near- neighbours and part of the Milky Way.

Answer 2

Nobody has answered about the constellations.

Yes, the constellations would be very different, the more so the further away you go.

Typically, constellation consist of stars at many different distances - some stars may be only 10s of lt years, others may be hundreds to a thousand plus (generally the stars you can see with the naked eye are less than 1500 lt years away). So, you would not have to go far in stellar terms before the layout of a constellation becomes very distorted and unrecognisable.

From anywhere in the planetary part of our Solar System, the constellations would look the same, simply because the nearest stars are 10,000 + times a far away as Neptune. If you went to Neptune, the displacement of the stars would be negligable to you without sensitive instruments.

Answer 3

Our Sun would look like the faint star that it is. The constellations will always look different if you view the stars from a distant solar system. Wait a few hundred thousand years and the constellations will look different from here as well. All of those twinkly lights are moving around, you know.

Answer 4

The sun would like just like the stars in the night sky look to us.

And the constellations, if not seen from earth, would look nothing like how they look on earth, as it would be from an entirely different position in the sky (example, look at a tree in the fall and imagine designs in what remains of the few leaves left, next walk behind the tree or slightly around it, the designs you imagined will no longer be there at all).

Answer 5

The sun would look like a star and most likely a dim star as it is one of the smaller stars when compared to many of the others we know about.

We think of constallations almost as being 2 dimensional because we draw them in books. However, they are really 3 dimensional. You could travel really long distance to the middle of the big dipper. However, it would not look like the big dipper at all. some of the stars could be back towards earth (or our sun) and you would have to turn around and look the other way to see the stars are are still beyond the planet you traveled to.

Answer 6

i think the sun would look just like other stars as we see from earth. I think constellations would look different. they move around u know

Answer 7

Very dim, almost can t see it. And it depends on how far the distant star system is. The sun is one of the smallest stars in the universe, the ones we can see from earth are much much bigger, huge, monstrous, compared to out dim sun. As a matter of fact, you wouldn t even know it was the sun, and maybe that s why aliens from other star systems haven t discovered earth yet, because it hasn t discovered our sun as the light from it hasn t reached them yet.

Answer 8

If the sun is so far, there will be no life on earth.
Hypothetically, if you find another source of life, the sun will be seen as a star, and of course everything will be different.

Answer 9

Actually, everyone here is wrong.

The sun would look like a neon road-sign saying "Eat at Joes!". Photos beamed back from Mars have proven this. This is common knowledge and should be in the "Restaurants" section of Yahoo questions.

Answer 10

Like any other star. A small point of light.