What's the best gift that you can get for your birthday?
Chocolate, DVDs and clothes are all good gifts, but what if you
could get your very own star? That would be brilliant!
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Birthday star (c) Maschinenraum
Whilst you might not be able to buy your own star (yet), the
Birthday Stars computer will look for a star that is your age in
light years away from the Earth. This means that the light we're
seeing from the star today actually left the star around when you
were born and has taken your entire life to reach Earth. Amazing!
Try it here:
http://outreach.jach.hawaii.edu/birthstars/
Light travelling in empty space is the fastest thing in the
universe. It travels at 186,000 miles per second!
The stars are so far away from us that their light still takes a
long time to reach Earth. One light year is the distance
light travels in a year: 5,878,499,812,499 miles. The closest star
apart from the Sun is 4.2 light years away, so its light takes 4.2
years to reach Earth.
The sun - seen from the Hinode x-ray telescope - is less
than one light year away from Earth (c) NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Centre
From month to month you may see your birthday star changing.
This is because as you get older the light from more and more
distant stars has had the time to travel to Earth in during your
life.