Question: why does is it appear that stars to glow and why can we see them from so far away?

Lauren Burns answered on 5 Jun 2018:

I am by no means an expert on the subject, so if any of my colleagues have another explanation then feel free to say! But, from my understanding, stars are made up of lots of teeny tiny things called atoms, and because there are so many atoms, the star is very big and very heavy. It is so heavy, that the atoms within it are pushed together and they ‘fuse’. When atoms ‘fuse’ they give out massive amount of ‘energy’ (like a million times stronger than a bomb’s explosion), we see that energy as light and because there are so many atoms constantly fusing, we can see it from a long way away. Interestingly, if you went into space and looked at a star, because there is no air in space, it doesn’t look like it’s twinkling. It’s just a dot. We only see twinkling when we’re on earth because of the air.