how come the night sky is dark when their are millions of stars to illuminate it?

Question

if one star(our own sun) can cause daylight then surely millions of stars should be able to illuminate the nightsky

Answer 1

All stars, other than the sun, are extremely far away from the earth. This means that we only recieve a very small percentage of radiation from each of these stars. There is so much dust and clouds of gas in the universe that almost all of the visible light emitted by these stars is blocked or absorbed by this type of matter.

Sciencenut - dust would only be able to emit the amount of radiation that a star would because of one very important reasons.

1. We live in a dynamic universe where objects are constantly in motion. A silicate atom, or any atom, would have to receive a high and consistent amount of electromagnetic radiation from a star for it to emit high amounts of its own radiation. This is impossible because of our ever changing universe and the large distances between stars. I agree with you that the universe is finite but I would strongly suggest that the main contribution to nights being dark is the high amount of matter that does not emit any radiation.

Answer 2

Because the Sun is so much nearer to us than the other stars are, that's why the Earth is illuminated during the day.

Imagine you're in a big aircraft hanger at night with only a hand torch. While you're close to that torch it's light and everything within a foot or two is lit up.

Now go to the other end of the hangar and it's dark. You might just be able to see the light from the torch but it's not strong enough to light the whole hangar and illuminate where you're standing.

Now mulitply that by a few million and you have the reason Alpha Centauri (our closest exo-solar star (four light years away) doesn't add light on the night time situation.

Answer 3

The answer lies in the truly vast amount of space that the light of the stars shines into.
The Sun is so much closer that we "catch" a correspondingly larger piece of the total light that it puts out. But a star at, say, 500 light years from us might be putting out roughly as much light as the Sun, with us only "catching" a very, very small piece of the total light.

The same thing applies to any point in space that you'd like to consider.

But the stars, in total, do deliver a measurable amount of light to us. That's evident from the fact that we can see them.
I read, also, that if we could collect all the stars that we can see and move them to one place in the sky, that they would cover a patch of sky roughly equal to half of what the Moon covers. It's been a while, and I may not have that size quite right, but I'm sure I'm in the ballpark.

If that's the case, then the stars in total give us about as much light as a half-moon. And that is enough to cast a shadow.

Answer 4

All of the other answers are wrong. This is the essence of "Olber's Paradox" that a German guy by the name of Olber put forth in the 1800s. His thinking was: assuming the Universe is infinite, then every possible line of sight should eventually intersect the surface of some sort of star. Thus the night sky should be just as bright, and just as hot, as our sun. He even gave a mathematical proof which is undeniable, based on his assumptions.
But the fact is, the night sky IS dark, and it IS cold. So the only logical conclusion is that at least one of his assumptions is WRONG. Dust does not answer the problem, since it can be shown that any dust will eventually get so hot that it will shine like a sun by itself. So what do you think the solution is?
1)Most authorities now think that our Universe is not infinite, but finite.
2)Even if our Universe were indeed infinite, the expansion and consequent cosmological redshift will suffice to make our sky cold and dark. This is because extremely distant starlight will be redshifted to infrared, microwaves, and radio waves, the farther you get from us. Eventually the starlight will be so redshifted as to be relegated to essentially nothingness, allowing for our sky to be dark and cold.
I hope this helps

Answer 5

Your eyes won't be able to come to a decision the sunshine from each and every massive call. as a results of fact the gap from the massive call will advance, the radiated potential from it decreases by the sq. of the gap. at last, they get so some distance away that we in basic terms won't be able to see them (a minimum of no longer as seen easy - in addition they radiate a great number of different wavelengths of potential). additionally, as we glance into the night sky, the ambience can occlude the faintest stars. And, if there is any easy in any respect emanating from the floor of the earth, it incredibly is then meditated by the ambience and that makes it impossible to verify the celebrities. it incredibly is called easy pollutants and it is why there are streetlights called low-stress sodium lamps. those positioned out a sort of yellowish coloration as a substitute of staggering white, which minimizes the quantity of sunshine pollutants they reason.

Answer 6

You need to get some context of how BIG the universe is.

The sun is 93 million miles away. It takes light travelling at 186,000 miles per SECOND (the speed of light) long enough to get to us so imagine how long it takes light from a star 24,000,000,000 miles away to travel to us deteriorating every second. By the time the light from some stars gets to us you are looking back in time.

In real time that star may not even exist any more.

Amazing!

Answer 7

think about it , the universe is very vast . if the sun is the size of a grain of sand , the closest star would be 2 miles away . At this rate , the star would have burned out even before they could light up the entire universe .

Answer 8

Our sun only seems bright because we are very very close to it (in inter-stellar terms). If you were that close to any other star, it would seem just as bright. But from where we are, all the other stars are very far away, and also, very far away from each other.
Another factor is the absence of anything for the starlight to reflect off. Our sky is only blue in the daytime because the sunlight hits our atmosphere. In cold, dark deep space, there is nothing for the light to reflect off.

Answer 9

The Sun is very near. The stars are very, very, very far away. All relative, of course, but as an example:

The Sun: 93,000,000 miles
Nearest star: approx. 24,696,000,000 miles

Brightness decreases as the square of the distance

So the Sun is about 70,000 times brighter than the nearest star. And most stars are _much_ further away than this!

Answer 10

for one reason it should be sufficient to know that out of vastness of space and innumerate stars the solar system is the only special system blessed by God. All the other stars however bright they be taking gods or goddess forms will have to submit to the higher order of the solar system.Space is ancient any milky realisation is only possible on earth.This is one way of ensuring that the higher worlds do not get corrupted.