Stars, the bright, twinkling tiny spots of light that can be seen in the sky during the night, in fact have sizes that a human brain would not be able to exactly picture. These balls of light are so far from the earth that their distance is also unbelievable.

The nearest star from the earth is the Sun and it is the only star in the solar system. It is the star on which Earth, the other planets, asteroids, and other objects in the solar system revolve. When the Earth is closest to the sun, the distance is approximately 146 million kilometers, and at its farthest, it is 152 million kilometers away. Although the sun is extremely huge, having a radius (distance from its center to its surface) of 432,000 miles, almost equivalent to ten times the size of Jupiter and 100 of the Earth, it is still considered a dwarf star. It is still one of the smallest stars known to exist in the universe.

Outside the solar system are billions of trillions of stars. The nearest star to Earth, other than the sun, is Proxima Centauri. Its name came from the latin word ‘proxima’ which means ‘nearest to’. It is estimated that this red dwarf star is 4.2 light years from earth or 39.96 trillion kilometers. It means that light that would travel from the Earth will reach Proxima Centauri’s surface only after 4.2 earth years. Proxima Centauri is part of a star system, which includes Alpha Centauri A, and Alpha Centauri B. From the sun, Proxima Centauri is 25 trillion miles distant.

The solar system and the Sun is part of the Milky Way galaxy, which contains 100 billions of stars. Just like how planets revolve and exist in a system just like the solar system, the stars exist and chiefly populate a galaxy. A galaxy is the most complex and massive system known to exist in the universe. It consists of stars of different sizes and colors. Outside the Milky Way galaxy possibly exists more galaxies with billions of trillions of stars. These galaxies may be 12 billion light years away and each of them will have millions of swarms of stars clustered together because of gravity. Surprisingly, there may be several billion trillions of stars in the whole universe.

Abell 1835 IR1916 is, so far, the most distant galaxy known to exist in the universe. It was detected and observed using the Very Large Telescope, which is a set of four large, individual optical telescpes. Each telescope has a diameter of 1.8 meters and using these along with other instruments in other observatories, the French and Swiss astronomers of the European Southern Observatory was able to determine the existence of Abell 1835. Its distance from the Earth is approximately 31 billion light years. This estimation was made possible even at such a great distance using the method ‘gravitational lensing’, which includes bending light from a source (earth), around a target object (in this case the Abell 1835) and to the observer. The stars in this galaxy are so far the most distant stars known to exist.

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