If we look up at night we see stars. And we don’t see every star as it takes years for the light to reach us. Does that

Question: If we look up at night we see stars. And we don't see every star as it takes years for the light to reach us. Does that mean we see different stars each night and could most have the stars died but the light before their death is still reaching us?
- Keywords:
  light,
  night,
  space,
  star
Asked by to Nat, Nate, Roberto, Sam on 25 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
- Nate Bastian answered on 25 Jun 2014:
  
  We see the same stars every night (although this changes over the year). Yes, the light takes years to reach us, but stars put out their energy continuously, so each day the star is sending out light.
  
  Some of the stars that we see may have died since they sent out their light, but the vast majority are still alive. The reason for this is that even though it can take hundreds of years for light to reach us, stars live for billions of years. So it is unlikely that any will die in the short time that it takes to send out light, and for that light to reach us.
  
  However, when we look across the Universe to very young galaxies (millions or billions of light years away), most of the light from those galaxies is from stars that have since died.
- Roberto Trotta answered on 25 Jun 2014:
  
  Every night we see pretty much the same sky, except for certain stars that change appearance over time (eg because they pulsate) or that suddenly increase their brightness (for example, supernova explosions, when a star reaches the end of its life and explodes in a great show of light and energy, which only lasts for a few days).
  
  But indeed it is true that the light from distant stars and galaxy takes sometimes a long time to reach us — for the most distant galaxies, it takes billion of years to get to us! So we see the galaxy as it was billion of years ago, when the light that now reaches us left it (at that time, the Earth didn’t even exist yet!). In the meantime, those distant galaxies and stars might well have died or changed — only we wouldn’t know it until much later.
  
  The same is true for the light from the Sun — it takes 8 minutes for light to get to us from the Sun. So if the Sun were to disappear “now” (which thankfully it won’t do!), then we wouldn’t know it until 8 minutes later.
- Natasha Stephen answered on 25 Jun 2014:
  
  As far as I am aware, we see pretty much the same night sky and therefore stars each night providing we are in the same place on Earth looking up! If you go to the Southern hemisphere, you will see something different; I was in Australia in 2012 and the sky was so dark, I could see thousands of stars! So many compared to looking up from London, including clusters of stars!
  
  Most of the stars in the sky are still alive (I think!) but yes, some of them will have died some time ago and it just takes time for the light to become visible to us. It’s a bit of an odd thought that, kind of like time travel as we’re looking at something that existed in the past but doesn’t today!
- Sam Connolly answered on 25 Jun 2014:
  
  Some stars, very massive ones, don’t live anywhere near as long as smaller stars, and be because there ate so many you get supernovae every day somewhere in the sky when one dies. New stars are constantly being born as well, but that takes a lot longer. The stats in the sky are changing constantly, but the things that change are more likely to be further away, so we wouldn’t be able to them by eye. Things can change though! There was a nearby stat that died in 1054 (ish) which was so close you could see it in the day, until it faded away and the star was gone. This could happen anytime, for example betelgeuse in Orion is very old and might die soon, but it might not die for thousands of years, it’s hard to tell! But mostly the sky visible by eye doesn’t change much.