by Objects in space are rather far away. The Moon is our closest celestial neighbor at nearly a quarter million miles from Earth, and the nearest star, our Sun, is 93 million miles away.
These extreme distances mean that it’s usually impossible to touch real objects in space (meteorites that fall to the ground not withstanding).
Advances in both astronomy and technology, however, now allow you to do the next best thing: hold a 3-D model of one based on real data.
Cassiopeia A is located about 10,000 light years from Earth.
How does that compare with our local cosmic objects of the Sun and Moon?
One light year equals the distance that light travels in a year, or just under 6 trillion miles (~10 trillion km).
This means that Cassiopeia A is an impressive 60,000,000,000,000,000 miles (100,000,000,000,000,000 km) from Earth.
Source
These extreme distances mean that it’s usually impossible to touch real objects in space (meteorites that fall to the ground not withstanding).
Advances in both astronomy and technology, however, now allow you to do the next best thing: hold a 3-D model of one based on real data.
Cassiopeia A is located about 10,000 light years from Earth.
How does that compare with our local cosmic objects of the Sun and Moon?
One light year equals the distance that light travels in a year, or just under 6 trillion miles (~10 trillion km).
This means that Cassiopeia A is an impressive 60,000,000,000,000,000 miles (100,000,000,000,000,000 km) from Earth.
Source
