Suns, far away

About this video

On a clear, dark night, away from bright lights, the sky fills with little shining dots. They are called stars, and they look tiny only because they are extremely far away, much, much farther than the Sun. Imagine you could fly toward one of them. As you got closer and closer it would grow bigger and brighter, until it looked just like our Sun: a huge, hot, glowing ball of gas that makes its own light.

So the stars are suns, and the Sun is a star: the one that happens to be close to us. That is the whole idea of this video, and it changes how the night sky looks. Every dot you can see is a sun of its own.

Why can't we see the stars in the daytime? They are still up there, rising and setting with the Earth's spin just like the Sun. But the Sun is so close and so bright that its light fills the whole sky, and the faint stars are lost in it. When the Sun goes down, they come out. To see them for yourself, go somewhere away from bright lights on a clear night, wait a few minutes for your eyes to get used to the dark, and count how many you can see. Every one of them is a sun. This video goes with the lesson Stars in Astronomy Level 1 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00On a clear, dark night, the sky is full of tiny shining dots. What are they?
2. 0:12Imagine you could fly toward one. As you got closer and closer, it would grow bigger and brighter, until it looked just like our Sun. A huge, hot, glowing ball.
3. 0:30So the stars are suns, very far away. And the Sun is a star. It's the one that happens to be close to us.
4. 0:44In the daytime the stars are still up there, rising and setting with the Earth's spin. But the Sun's light fills the sky, and the faint stars are lost in it. When the Sun goes down, they come out.
5. 1:02Every star is a sun. Ours is the close one.