Why isn't the sky bright at night since there are so many stars in space?

Similar questions: sky bright night stars space.

Heh Actually it is. The problem on Earth is that most of the light is blocked by crud in the atmosphere or, if visible, washed out by the Moon. You need to see the sky from someplace where the air is very clear.

Back when I was in the Air Force, I was stationed in Alaska for a couple of years and we did a lot of winter camping. Get about a hundred miles north of Anchorage at 2AM on a moonless 50 below zero February night and look up. You'll see 10 times the stars you do in civilized climes and you can read a newspaper by the starlight alone.

For about 30 seconds before your whatsis freezes off. Sources: Been there, done that JBENZ's Recommendations Aurora Watcher's Handbook (Natural story) Amazon List Price: $20.00 Used from: $3.75 .

Hmmm... You know, this question sure looks like a plant. Just to think up the question requires a whole lot of special knowledge about astronomy and inverse square laws and such. The question is commonly referred to as "Olbers Paradox".

One explanation is that the universe is expanding, so the light coming toward us is red shifted, and therefore lowered in frequency and energy.

Because of the distance of the stars, and intervening matter. One way to measure brightness is to count the number of photons received. We receive an immense amount of photons from the Sun, so many that they are diffused and refracted in the atmosphere and drown out the light from other stars.

We receive enough photons from some stars to stimulate our eyes at night, if the stars are large enough and close enough. Some stars in our galaxy are too far away or don't generate enough photons in our direction for our eyes to detect them. This is normal since the distances are so great.

Light intensity appears to diminish with distance because as distance increases, the area of the sphere surrounding the star increases. The same number of photons are spread over a larger area, and so fewer enter our eye. Eventually the distance is so great that the number of photons from a star entering our eye is so small that our brains cannot detect them.

Then there are intervening gas clouds. Just like clouds in our atmosphere shade us from the Sun sometimes, interstellar gas clouds of hydrogen and helium can block the light of other stars. Gravity also curves space and can redirect photons off of a straight line course (relatively speaking, get it?

Relativity? ). The old question goes, "If the universe is infinite, then in any given direction I look, there ought to be a star at some distance.

Why isn't the sky constantly bright? " The answer is that distance diminishes the intensity of the light from distant stars down to 0 as far as our eyes are concerned, and intervening gas and matter blocks some light. I hope this helps..

It is, but we cannot see it this way from our perspective as ephemeral beings newuser: . This is actually not as naive of a questionas may first appear on the surface, and has been pondered by physicists. .

The real root of the question you bring up is this: . If space is nearly infinite, and there are an infinite number of stars relatively speaking (for all practical purposes innumerable from a human point of view), then why does not the combined starlight of all these stars flood the night sky with brilliance? .

Most people assume that it is because the stars are very far apart. But that’s faulty reasoning. Because there are so many stars, their distance from each other is rather irrelevent, as the light essentially should "fill in the gaps" as you have stars far behind each other emitting visible light that passes through these voids between nearer stars... .

But the real explanation for the reason behind why the night sky is mostly black is that this is a function of TIME. . Because light also has a "speed limit" to it, we do not actually see all of the light that exists in the universe at any one time.

Some of it is still on its way to us, some of it is being emitted by stars that long since burnt themselves out, etc... . So every time you look into the night sky you are looking into the past, but you are looking also into a plethora of past time periods, not just one. .

Every star you see, is being displayed to you at a different period in its past, depending on its distance from the Earth. So when you look at the night sky, you are never seeing a true "present" representation of the universe but instead a wide variety of past representations of it. .

A galaxy a billion light years away is emitting light that we see - that it produced a billion years ago. A star 25 light years away is appearing to us as it appeared 25 years ago... . So the answer to your question is, if we could eliminate the factor of time in our observation of space, it would indeed be blindingly bright white in all directions... .

Sources: questions physicists think about .

Simple answer... Light pollution. While it's not as damaging as other kids of pollution, we are constantly barraged with artificial light. Unless you have a place where you can get CLEAR away from light generated by humans (hard to do, these days) you really don't have a clue how BRIGHT the night sky can really be.

Even if you're way out in the country, these days, you're apt to have competition from human generated light--the glow from a nearby town. Yard lights at a farm. Our eyes pick up the brighter, closer light, and it overwhelms star light.

But if you go somewhere (last chance I had was in the Allegheny National Forest, camping) where you DON'T have any human-generated ambiant light? The sky is AMAZING. Breathtaking.

The first time I remember REALLY seeing the night sky was when I was little--and we went to see my brother at boy scout camp. No artificial light source, and I looked up, and was simply awe-struck. When the Hale-Bopp comet came visiting a couple of years ago (OK, so it was probably 10 years ago, now), finding a good place to see it meant trying to get away from light pollution.

Sources: Personal experience NancyE's Recommendations The Urban Astronomer's Guide: A Walking Tour of the Cosmos for City Sky Watchers (Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series) Amazon List Price: $39.95 Used from: $24.75 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 7 reviews) .

Is it plausible that there is space, stars, etc. Near to our planet but not visible because they are "beyond" what we.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.