Stargazing Guy

It’s the Sun. Do not look at it with the naked eye!

All the stars in the night sky are suns – similar to our sun – but a long way from Earth.

Stars are enormous balls of gas that act as powerful nuclear fusion reactors. They convert hydrogen into helium, other elements and huge amounts of energy.

Our Sun (please – don’t look at it with the naked eye!) is about 149 million kilometres (c93 million miles) from Earth.

The next nearest sun is a star called Proxima Centauri and is just over 4.25 light years away, although it is too dim to be seen with the naked eye.

[Image of Proxima Centauri taken by Hubble (October 2013)]

The 2 bright stars below are Alpha and Beta Centauri, respectively. The red circle shows the location of Proxima. It is much dimmer than its companions.

Therefore, it is more difficult to see from Earth.

The second brightest star (after the sun) is Sirius – which is 8.6 light years from Earth

Other stars are 100s and 1000s of light years away.

See a future blog about ‘light years’ and how astronomers measure distance.

So, we know what stars are – they are suns a long way from Earth.

They are not planets or satellites (such as the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, etc) or comets, meteors or artificial satellites – they will be covered in future blogs. As well as how suns work!

The next question is “What are constellations?” – answer to follow!