Is it true we can see stars that died a million years ago?

The starry studs in the sky are specks of light that have traveled towards us across the vast oceans of space. This light travels about six million, million miles a year and some of the stars are trillions and trillions of miles away from us. The light we see set out towards us many years ago. The light of the sun takes about eight minutes to reach us. The light of next nearest star takes more than four years to reach us.

When we look at a star, we are gazing at a picture of what it was years ago, when its light started towards us. In the meantime, the star may have changed   and the news of the change will also take years to reach us. If the bright star Antares faded to ashes today, which is not likely, the news would not reach us for 170 years. Some of the stars are much farther away and if they died, they would continue to shine in our skies for hundreds, even thousands of years.