NEAR and FAR

What was happening here on Earth when light left some of the night sky’s most stunning sights? Stuart Atkinson investigates

As a child, hiding behind a curtain in the school library, devouring books about space when I should have been outside playing, I was amazed to read that when we look up at the stars we are looking back in time too. The light entering our eyes from these distant objects set off years, decades or millennia earlier. It still fascinates me today knowing that every time we look at something ‘up there’ we’re seeing it as it was in the past. Science fiction has got it wrong; you don’t need a TARDIS or a DeLorean to travel back in time – your own eyes will do just fine. To demonstrate, here we take a temporal tour of objects in the night sky, which can be seen from a back…

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The Astronomer's Yearbook (Digital) - 1 Issue, Astronomer's Yearbook 2022

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