New stars in the sky.

[styley]

You know the way it takes light from the stars a certain amount of time to reach earth, and the light that we are seeing in the sky from some stars tonight is actually the light that was emitted from it, perhaps years ago? Well my question is, are there any stars from which their light has not yet reached earth, but will reach us in the next few years, hence a new star in the sky? Or is it actually happening regularly? Or am I totally wrong in my assertions?

[ridgerunner]

Stars are regularly being born (created from interstellar matter) and gracing the universe. Most thousands of light years from us so their light wil take some time to reach earth. This process has been going on since the beginning of the universe and will continue to do so until it comes to an end. So new stars will regularly pop into existence and be visible to us. Likewise stars die on a regular basis. Some just buring out and collapsing in on themselves to become dwarf stars with no light visible. Just a lump in the firmament. Then there those that explode and light up the universe for long periods with their remnants. eg The Crab Nebulae. Any help?

[styley]

Any chance of actually seeing one appearing/disappearing from down here?

[mibn2cweus]

In comparison to one human lifetime star birth is very gradual. The beginning of the fusion process that ignites stars takes place deep inside where the pressure is greatest from the gravitation compression of the surrounding accumulating mass. After the stars first light slowly migrates throught the dense interior to the surface after millions of years the surrounding cloud of gas in which it forms and that has shrouded it from view begins to be slowly blown away by its stellar wind.

Kind of like watching a pot waiting for it to boil.

[mibn2cweus]

star birth

[Clanad]

In addition to the insightful answers already provided, we know that the first or proto-stars were born shortly after the Big Bang, approximately 14 billions (ba) of years ago. We are only able to see, either visually or with telescopes that detect electromagnetic waves of different kinds (microwave), so far at least, galaxies of stars formed about 13 billion years ago. The Hubble Deep Field (HDF), using the Hubble space based telescope has detected a galaxy nearly 13.7 billion years old. So, there are theorized galaxies that are older of which the light has simply not reached Earth (or, more correctly, our telescopes) yet. (Some astrohysicists estimate the age of the Universe at near 20 billion years)...