DISTANCES OF THE STARS

Astronomical distances are so vast that they can only be measured in the mind relatively. The distances between the planets in our own solar system seem big enough; yet they shrink into insignificance when compared to the distances which separate our whole solar system from even the nearest of the stars. Alpha Centauri is the nearest star, and it is separated from us by a distance 276,000 times as great as that which separates us from our sun. It is approximately 25 billion miles away. Traveling with the speed of an express train flung into space, at 40 miles an hour, towards the nearest star, without any stoppage or any slowing down, we should not arrive at our destination until after an interrupted flight of 75 million years. Yet this is our nearest neighbour! Only a very few of the stars are within 400,000,000,000,000 miles of the sun. The great majority of them are many times this distance from us.

So vast are these distances that some simple means of expressing them on paper was sought. A “light Year” was finally decided upon as the unit of measurement—that is, the distance which light would travel in one year, speeding at the rate of 186,000 miles a second. It has been estimated that many stars are one, two, three and perhaps five hundred thousand light-years distant from us in space. The interested reader may figure-out the number of miles this represents for himself!