If it takes millions of years for starlight to travel to Earth, does that mean that the night sky might actually be a lot different than it appears?
by 
xjimmyloudx
ANSWERS: 6
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Yes it is. The night sky that we observe is as it was thousands and millions of years ago.. I find this fact fascinating because when you look up at the stars you are witnessing them all at different times simultaneously! We are all products of stars that once existed.. I wonder if we could build a telescope powerful enough to actually witness the big bang. In effect we would be witnessing ourselves so far back in the past we weren't even stars yet. Great question!!
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In a way. The "night sky" us what we see after all that time. But the stars we see will have evolved since they emitted the light we see, and some of them may have exploded, gone out or otherwise changed. It gets even more different with a telescope: the most distant visible galaxies we see with light more than ten billion years old, so undoubtedly if you could see them today, they would be very, very different.
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Quite correct. We've witnessed a few novas and whatnot in recent years, the funny thing is we are seeing an event that actually occurred hundreds if not thousands of years prior. It simply takes the light that long to get here.
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Terrific question! But if we're talking about the sky that you can see with your eyes, it's probably not too different from what it actually is "now." One of the furthest objects you can see with the naked eye is the great spiral nebula in Andromeda. That's 2 million light years away, roughly. The vast majority of the stars you can see at night are in our own Galaxy, or in small satellite galaxies like the Lesser and Greater Magellenic Clouds. So the "oldest" light you're seeing is probably somewhere in the range of 300,000 years or less. Which is a blip in the lifetime of most stars. So what you're seeing is probably pretty close to accurate. Having said that, there will probably be an observable supernova in the next couple of days simply for the purpose of making me look like an idiot. :-)
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yes- espec if looking through a telescope like Hubble at very distant galaxies. they would be in totally different positions, look totally different , or in some cases, may be gone completely.
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every one said it : Apparrent Position vs. Actual Position when you look at the night sky what you see is NOT what it is or where it is as the case maybe ... ~Nemo~
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