distance of stars?

Question

I heard a guy in my astronomy class say .. if a star is 100 times the distance , it takes 100 years for that stars light to reach us .

did I get it right ?
.. I want to learn that , what's that called and how do you go about figuring it out?

It's so KEWL !!

Answer 1

Hello Astrogurl:

Your friend almost got it right, or you heard almost all of the
words...

Stars are located from 4.5 Light Years up to 40 Billion Light Years away from the Earth. That means that the light coming to us from them has been traveling for 4.5 years up to 40 Billion Years. Light travels at 186,000 Miles Per Second. So, If light has been traveling through space for a year it has traveled a "very" long distance, almost 6 trillion miles. Light from the Moon takes 1 1/4 second to reach Earth, and Light from the Sun takes about 8 Minutes to reach the Earth, 93.000,000 Miles away.

Hope that helps you out, and provides the information you were seeking.

if you want to see some cool Photos of Space, please have a look in the Gallery at Hubblesite.org.

Answer 2

When astronomers talk about distances to the stars, they would have some HUGE numbers if they use miles or kilometers. So instead of the normal distance measurements, they used the distance light travels in one year and called it a light year.

Light travels at around 300 million meters per second, so a light year is a long distance (about 9.4 trillion kilometers).

So when they say a star is 100 light years away, it means it's so far that light from that star takes 100 years to get to Earth.

Answer 3

Not quite right

Aside from the sun (which is 7-8 light minutes away) the closest star is just over 4 light years and it takes light 4+ years to reach us.

If some other star was 100 times further than that it would take over 400 years for the light to reach us.

Answer 4

That's great you are taking interest in astronomy. Like most have said a light year is the distance light travels in a year. Light travels at 186,000 miles in just one second to give you an idea of how far things are in space. It takes light about 100,000 years to get across the milky way and about 1.5 seconds to get to the moon from earth. If the universe was the size of the earth then the visible universe (what we can see from earth) would be smaller than a proton. get used to using scientific notation

Answer 5

The sun is 96 million miles away from the Earth and its light takes 8 MINUTES to reach us. That means that if 5 minutes ago the sun blew itself up, we would still be sunning ourselves for 3 more minutes! Distances in the Universe are HUGE!!!

Answer 6

The term is light-year. that's the distance light travels in one year.

186,000 miles per second for 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 365 days.


That's 5.88 trillion miles. Each light-year is that distance.

Alpha Centauri is actually the nearest star "system", a cluster about 4.37 lightyears away. Proxima Centauri, as an individual star, gets the closest to Earth in its cluster orbit at 4.22 lightyears away.

Answer 7

I'm adding to June's comment: If a star is 500 light years away, we see how it looked shortly after Columbus first came to America.

Answer 8

the term used to describe the distance light takes in one year in a light year. to determine the distance you use a method called paralax. You use trigonometry with the baseline(distance between the two and angles) divide it by two and then do the math.

Answer 9

100 light years is the *distance* over which light travels in 100 years.

Light in a vacuum travels at 186,282 miles per second...do the math!