![]() ![]() ![]() In fact, some of the dimmer stars in the view above are thousands of light-years away, and yet we can see them in the same field of view. The brightest star to the left of it, Hadar, is over 520 light-years away, or 120 times as distant. Rigil Kentaurus is the closest easily-visible stellar system to the Sun, at just 4.4 light-years away (that is, when I see it tonight, I'll see it as it was 4 years and 5 months ago, because that's how long the light has been travelling on its way to Earth). Consider this region of the sky around the Southern Cross, one of my favourite regions: Because our eyes/brains are, frankly, rubbish at judging distance when there are no visual cues such as relative size, it doesn't look like those two stars are very far apart from each other. When we look out at the night sky, we see stars that are close (like my friend), and stars that are far away (like the person in the background). Their faces may look like they're right beside each other (ignoring visual cues like the relative size of their heads), and yet the second person may be close to the other side of the crowd. I turn to look at my friend beside me, and in the distance, I see someone else I know. When I stand in a crowd, I might be able to see hundreds of people. ![]()
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