light year

  • The Average Star

    The Average Star

    What the heck is the average star like? We’ve talked about a lot of stars over the past few weeks. We’ve discovered the vast distances between the stars, looked more closely at what really makes a star bright, and covered all…

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  • How Far Are the Stars?

    How Far Are the Stars?

    Stars don’t look small because they’re really the size of pinholes in a blanket. The smallest are the size of Earth. The largest have 128,865,170 times Earth’s diameter. They look small in the sky because they’re distant. It’s for the same…

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  • The True Brightness of Stars

    The True Brightness of Stars

    Have you ever looked up at the night sky and noticed that while relatively bright stars outline the constellations, there are numerous other stars that are almost too faint to see with the naked eye? If you ever noticed this,…

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  • Distances Between Stars

    Distances Between Stars

    When you look up into the sky on a clear night away from the glare of the city, you see trillions upon trillions of stars. Thousands of years ago, the classical astronomers saw the same thing you do today — except…

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