Now, before I turn to wikipedia, I was wondering what you guys thought. There’s this article I found on Google news saying that astronomers have found a solar system similar to ours 5000 light years away. What caught my attention was that last part, “5000 light years away”. Now, I know a light year is the distance which light travels in a year, but how were they able to get an “image” of this system if it were 5000 light years away. If I remember correctly from my science class, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so how can you probe something that far in a relatively short period of time?
I’ve speculated that satellites in orbit are simply picking up images or radiation that have been traveling for that long, meaning they are actually from the past. I figured this were the case since they say that when you look at the sun, it’s actually an image of it 7-8 minutes ago.
I never really cared much for astronomy, but this intrigues me.
