Questions 20-30
Stars
The locations of stars in the sky relative to one another do not appear to the naked eye to
change, and as a result stars are often considered to be fixed in position. Many unaware stargazers
falsely assume that each star has its own permanent home in the nighttime sky.
In reality, though, stars are always moving, but because of the tremendous distances between
stars themselves and from stars to Earth, the changes are barely perceptible here. An example of a
rather fast-moving star demonstrates why this misconception prevails; it takes approximately 200
years for a relatively rapid star like Bernard's star to move a distance in the skies equal to the
diameter of the earth's moon. When the apparently negligible movement of the stars is contrasted
with the movement of the planets, the stars are seemingly unmoving.
