Stars

We met the Sun: a huge ball of hot, glowing gas that gives us light and heat. Is the Sun the only thing like that?

Look at the night sky

No. To find more, you only need to wait for a clear, dark night and look up. All those little shining dots are called stars.

They look tiny, but that is only because they are extremely far away - much, much farther than the Sun.

Go closer and closer

Imagine you could fly toward one of those dots. As you got closer and closer, it would grow bigger and brighter, until it looked just like our Sun: a huge, hot, glowing ball.

So the stars are suns, and the Sun is a star - the one that happens to be close to us.

Why can't we see stars in the day?

They are still up there in the daytime, rising and setting with the Earth's spin just like the Sun. The Sun is so close and so bright that its light fills the sky, and the faint stars are lost in it. When the Sun goes down, they come out.

Words to know

star - a huge ball of hot, glowing gas that makes its own light; the Sun is one

Try it tonight

On a clear night, go somewhere away from bright lights, wait a few minutes for your eyes to get used to the dark, and count how many stars you can see. Every one of them is a sun.