hackertube.io

How Far Are The Nearest Stars?

Cody'sLab · explainer · Watch on YouTube

Cosmology & astrophysicsSpace exploration & spaceflight

What it is

Cody's Lab builds a 200-billionth-scale model to show how far away the nearest stars are, using parallax and light speed. A short astronomy explainer on interstellar distances.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended whenever threads need an intuition for the vast distances between stars.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 5 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2019, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “Also gives an intuition for how incredibly bright stars shine”

    Favorite video on star distances; also shows how bright stars are

    7373737373, 2025-05 · Strong recommendation · in “Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart”

  2. “Here's a fun video that explains”

    Conveys the vast distances to nearest stars

    andrewstuart, 2019-10 · Recommendation · in “Humans will not 'migrate' to exoplanets, Nobel winner says”

  3. “Cody put a few solar system objects on a stadium, with distances to scale, the sun is represented by a pea.”

    Scale model of solar system with road trip to nearest stars

    GuB-42, 2021-03 · Recommendation · in “The Sweden Solar System”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: scale model, alpha centauri, astronomy, parallax, space

Also recommended by the same people