Top Document: [sci.astro] Stars (Astronomy Frequently Asked Questions) (7/9) Previous Document: G.11 How far away is the farthest star? Next Document: Copyright See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge Author: Joseph Lazio <jlazio@patriot.net> In general, no. The reason is that stellar distances are so large. Over human time spans, the typical velocity of a star is so low that its distance does not change appreciably. Let's consider a star with a velocity of 10 km/s, typical of most stars. In 1000 yrs, this star moves about 300 billion kilometers (or 3E11 km). Suppose the star is 100 light years (about 1E15 km or 1 quadrillion kilometers) distant. Thus, in 1000 yrs, the star moves about 0.03% of its distance from the Sun. This is such a small change, it's not worth worrying about it. The situation is even more extreme in the case of galaxies. Typical galaxy velocities might be hundreds to thousands of kilometers per second. However, their distances are measured in the millions to billions of light years. User Contributions:Top Document: [sci.astro] Stars (Astronomy Frequently Asked Questions) (7/9) Previous Document: G.11 How far away is the farthest star? Next Document: Copyright Part0 - Part1 - Part2 - Part3 - Part4 - Part5 - Part6 - Part7 - Part8 - Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: jlazio@patriot.net
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
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