A planetarium's late-night show
Late Light
The house lights go down. Lean back and scroll: every turn of the wheel carries you further out, and the light reaching your seat gets older.
The Moon. Its light is a second late.
Sunlight bounces off the Moon and reaches your seat 1.3 seconds later. So even the closest thing in the sky is already the past.
- Light travel
- 1.3 s
- Lit by
- the Sun
Saturn, as it looked an hour and a quarter ago.
The main rings span about 280,000 km and are mostly water ice. The distance changes as we both orbit the Sun, so the delay does too.
- Light travel
- about 78 min
- Rings
- mostly ice
The Pleiades. This light set off in 1582.
Seven stars to the eye, more than a thousand in the cluster. The blue haze is a cloud of dust they happen to be passing through, lit by them.
- Light travel
- 444 years
- Find it in
- Taurus
The Orion Nebula, glowing since the year 682.
A cloud of hydrogen where stars are being born. Four young stars at its heart, the Trapezium, light the gas from inside. You can find it by eye, just below Orion's belt.
- Light travel
- 1,344 years
- Glows
- hydrogen red
Andromeda. This light is older than our species.
The farthest thing most people can see without a telescope: about a trillion stars, heading our way. Behind it, galaxies all the way back.