12-23-2017, 08:59 PM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by dlazarus6660
Are you folks forgetting that the light from the stars we see today is from far, far away and hundreds or thousands of years away in the past.
We see the light from the stars of the past.
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Already covered in Reply #4 above; I've looked back millions of years at the Andromeda and Sombrero galaxies. On the night when Comet Hyakutake was closest to Earth, I viewed it from Everglades National Park. From there I also saw our nearest stellar neighbors, the Alpha Centauri system, low above the horizon (the very faint Proxima Centauri was quite invisible, of course; the visible light came from Alpha Centauri A and B), and I wondered if at that moment someone might be looking back at me across those 4.3 light-years. |