THE VIDEO SHELF · interstellar distances
How Far Are The Nearest Stars?
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 HN readers recommended it
Recommended whenever threads need an intuition for the vast distances between stars.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Cody'sLab
- Topic
- interstellar distances
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 3
- HN mentions in dataset
- 6
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2019–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
My favorite: Cody'sLab's "How far away are the nearest stars": [VIDEO] Also gives an intuition for how incredibly bright stars shine
7373737373 on Hacker News · 2025-05
In Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apartAnyone who thinks we'll ever travel to another solar system really truly fails to understand the distances involved. The furthest humanity has ever travelled, by way of analogy, is a couple of millimeters - to the moon. The nearest star system relatively speaking is another …
andrewstuart on Hacker News · 2019-10
In Humans will not 'migrate' to exoplanets, Nobel winner saysCody put a few solar system objects on a stadium, with distances to scale, the sun is represented by a pea. He then proceeds to drive cross country to put on the closest stars. [VIDEO]
GuB-42 on Hacker News · 2021-03
In The Sweden Solar System
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.