How far away is the North Star?
The North Star, also called Polaris or α Ursae Minoris, is about 430 lightyears from Earth. In a car going 100 miles per hour that never stops, it would take you about 3 thousand million years to travel that distance. The North Star is due north in the sky, at a height above the horizon that is equal to your north latitude. The North Star is not visible from the southern hemisphere of Earth. All stars move around compared to one another. The Sun is a star, too, and moves compared to the other stars, so if you wait for long enough, then all stars are in different positions compared to the Sun. The distances and speeds of stars are such that even a nearby star takes many tens of thousands of years to move to the opposite side of the sky (relative to the other stars). The North Star is quite far away and takes about 80,000 years to move one degree in the sky (compared to the other stars). At the moment the North Star is close to the North Pole of the sky, the point in the sky that all sta
