Many are within the ranges of 20-500 light years. But some are farther.
Conveniently enough, light takes one year to travel one light year, so you don't have to do any conversions to figure out how long it takes the light to get here, if you are given the distance in LY.How long does it take for the light from a distant star to reach earth?
The distance of stars are measured in light years, but some astronomers use parsec, but lets use light years to make it simple. Light in open space travels at 186, 282.397 miles per second. So if you multiply the number of seconds in a whole year by the speed of light you get just over 5.8 trillion miles. This is the distance light travels in one year. So if a star like Spica, which is almost 265 light years away, were to go supernova and blow up tomorrow; then we would not know this for another 265 years from now. When you look at Spica in the night sky, which is in the constellation Virgo, you are seeing the light from this star as it appeared 265 years ago.How long does it take for the light from a distant star to reach earth?Despite light is faster than anything else in the universe(its speed is about 1,86,000 miles/sec), there exist some stars which look like millions of years older than their original form because they are several 'light years' far from us and light takes that much time to come to us. There are also many stars which are visible to us in night but they do not exist any more, what we see is actually the radiation emitted by them several years back.
Do you know the closest star to us(after the sun) is Proxima Centauri which is 4.24 light years far from us. This means light takes more than 4 years to reach to us from it.How long does it take for the light from a distant star to reach earth?
To add to the other answers, the reference below has a small list of brighter-appearing stars and their distance in light years, which is also the time you are asking about. For instance, on row 45 is Polaris the North Pole star which is 430 light years distant and if it blew up, we wouldn't see that for 430 years after it blew up.
For scale, one light year is a distance that equals:
9,460,730,472,580.8 km
or
5,878,625,373,183.608 miles
The Sun is about 8 light minutes from us.How long does it take for the light from a distant star to reach earth?Light travels at approximately 186,282 miles per second. So depending on how far the star is, it could be millions or even billions of years before we see it's light (essentially we are looking into the past). The closest star besides the sun is Proxima Centauri, and I believe it takes about four years for it's light to reach us.How long does it take for the light from a distant star to reach earth?
That depends on the distance of the star. As we know light travels at the speed of 186,000 per second and many of the distant stars you see have burned out thousands of years before we see the light. That is a good indication of how large the universe is.How long does it take for the light from a distant star to reach earth?
Depends on how far that star is. For example, Alpha Centauri is only 4.37 light years away,so it takes light 4.37 years to get here. For a star further away, it would take longer. The bright star Deneb is around 1400 light years away, so you see i tas it was around 1400 years ago.
As many years as the star is distant, as measured in light-years.
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