Feeling a little small

[SARGE]

The new star they found is 950 light years away so I began calculating and not enough zeroes on any calculator. To think I could circle the earth 7.5 times in a second makes me feel ... sheesh. Light travels 5.88 trillion miles in a year X 950 light years. We got telescopes that powerful??

How far is a light-year? | Astronomy Essentials | EarthSky

[David M]

We have enormous "light buckets" as astronomers call them. They can see light from billions of years back in time. Actually, 950 light years away is relatively close. You can see stars with your naked eye that are much further away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods...asolar_planets

[Preston]

Just a spec....

[HAL9000]

Well Sarge.. that's where things get interesting.. since that star is 950 light years away... the light actually takes 950 years to get here....so when we view it in a telescope, we see what it looked like 950 years ago. Even more interesting, I read an article about the star Betelgeuse which is expected to go supernova soon, if it hasn't already. It's 520 light years away. They say that when the light does reach us from the supernova explosion, that it will light up the dark side of the earth and appear as a second sun for approximately two weeks. Would be a really cool thing to see and experience, but since predicting it's death isn't an exact science, I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to happen.

[SARGE]

So the star you see tonight may not even be there anymore?

[HAL9000]

Exactly

[Preston]

A little more trivia:

Light from our sun takes about 8 minutes to reach earth.

[SARGE]

Living in Dallas we don't see many stars like did when I was a kid here. Our place at the lake in the country an hour away, I couldn't believe my eyes the stars were so bright the first night there. The most absolute awesome night was a few years ago in Cozumel on the beach at night with all the buds, just laying there looking up. I swear it seemed one could reach up and actually grab a star. I remember seeing the dippers. You fellers out in the country away from city lights are lucky.

[HAL9000]

If you really want to feel insignificant Sarge... watch this. Take note of the sizes.... if you want miles.. multiply by 0.6, although, you will see, it won't really matter.

[SARGE]

I don't feel insignificant, just a little small. One can get all melancholy and full of wonderment and lay on the beach at night and stare up, and read all this stuff and ask the eternal question, "what does all this mean?" We're just mortals and mankind always asked that. I did notice all the planets, sun, moon are all round. Why? Why not square or odd shapes?

Thanks for the link

[HAL9000]

As they form from dust, rock and whatever other materials, that's just the natural shape that the increasingly forming gravitational pull will create in a vacuum. Everything is an equal distance from the center of mass.

[Dominic753s]

Thanks for the video, HAL9000. This one is great too.