Why do we see stars?

If the sun seems so small at only 8 minutes of light speed away, how is it that we are able to see stars at all that are light-years away? It seems to me that their visible size should be infinitesimally small and therefore they should be invisible.

Whether we are able to see an object or not just depends only on the amount of light that is reaching us and is independent of its size. If you cannot see an object, it just means that the amount of light coming is not enough for your eye to discern it.

It is true that the angular size of stars is extremely small and that is the reason why no telescope has ever taken a well resolved picture of a star. For us at the Earth, the atmosphere causes an angular blurring by scintillation (which is why stars twinkle) and smears their size to about 1 arcsecond (which is 1/3600 of a degree).

Even for telescopes like Hubble which is above the Earth's atmosphere, the star's angular size is too small to be resolved. But remember that each star produces a lot of light which is more than enough for the eye to discern them. Hence we see stars; However they are too small; so we see them as points and not disks (as you would with planets).

June 2002, Jagadheep D. Pandian (more by Jagadheep D. Pandian) (Like this Answer)

Still Curious?

Get More 'Curious?' with Our New PODCAST:

Related questions:

More questions about Stargazing: Previous | Next

How to ask a question:

If you have a follow-up question concerning the above subject, submit it here. If you have a question about another area of astronomy, find the topic you're interested in from the archive on our site menu, or go here for help.

URL: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=174
This page has been accessed 46452 times since August 24, 2002.
Last modified: August 24, 2002 3:40:59 PM

Legal questions? See our copyright, disclaimer and privacy policy.
Ask an Astronomer is hosted by the Astronomy Department at Cornell University and is produced with PHP and MySQL.