How far is the north star from the earth?
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According to Celestia it's 431.44 light years. Be sure and pack a lunch.
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Use the North Star like you would a compass.\n\nThe North Star is a title of the star best suited for navigation northwards. A candidate must be visible from Earth and circumpolar to the north celestial pole. The current one is Polaris. It is the star at the end of the "handle" of the Little Dipper asterism in the constellation Ursa Minor.\n\nThe North Star has been historically used by explorers to determine their latitude. At any point north of the equator the angle from the horizon to the North Star (its altitude) is the same as the latitude from which that angle was taken. For example, the angle to the North Star for a person at 30° latitude will be about 30°.\n\nPolaris has a visual magnitude of 1.97 (second magnitude). In 3000 BC the faint star Thuban in the constellation Draco was the North Star. At magnitude 3.67 (fourth magnitude) it is only one-fifth as bright as Polaris. The first magnitude star Vega will be the North Star by AD 14,000.\n\nCurrently, there is no South Star as useful as Polaris; the faint star σ Octantis is closest to the south celestial pole. However, the constellation Crux, the Southern Cross, points towards the south pole.
807791
Well, within 1 lightyear of earth there isn't anything we know of. The nearest Star is Alpha Proxima (or is Centauri B closer now?) and its around 4.5 light years away.\n\nThere are around 100 stars within 50 lightyears of earth and that number grows as you move away. You wont find any other clusters or galaxies until you get to around 2.5 million light years with the closest Galaxy, Andromeda. - the nearest supercluster is more on the order of 50 million light years.
7779
Distance From Sun is: 93,000,000 Miles
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Sirius is also one of the nearest stars to Earth At a distance of 2.6 pc or 8.57 light years\nfor more information go to http://www.crystalinks.com/sirius.html\nhttp://www.google.co.in/search?q=distance%2Bsirius&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
838509
Alpha Centauri is the closest star system beyond our own solar system  4.39 light years away.  It is composed of 3 small stars: two of which, A. Centauri A, and A. Centauri B are similar to Earth.   Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star in that system is the closest @ ~ 4.26 light years.\n\nThere are (probably) no planets in that system.  It is highly unlikely that there is any intelligent life close to Earth (ie < 100 light years) but no one really knows.  Some say there is no intelligent life on Earth.
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The next nearest star to earth (after the sun) is Proxima Centauri.\nWhat's really scary is that it would take you 4 years, travleing at light speed, to reach that star(space ships only travel 5 mi. per sec.) so in other words we aren't getting there any time soon. Hope this helped.
948632
The Little Dipper is near the north celestial pole, and contains Polaris (the North Star). It's only visible by people who live north of the Earth's equator.\n\nMost places on the Earth have some part of the sky that is never visible. The exception being people who live near the equator. \nAs you move away from the equator, you lose the ability to see stars near the far pole (i.e. as you move south you lose the ability to see stars near the north pole), and the further away you go the less of the opposite hemisphere you're able to still see. Once you reach the pole you can only see stars in your hemisphere.\n\nPeople who live south of the equator can't see the stars near the north pole (like the little dipper) and people who live north of the equator can't see the Southern Cross or the Magellanic clouds.\n\nHowever, as long as you don't live at one of the poles you can see some stars in the other hemisphere - just not all of them.
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the big dipper is always pretty much in the north, but ir revolves around the north star as the year progresses, and as each night progresses. About now, if you looked north at about 10 PM, it is a bit east of the north star
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Their distance from the Sun
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Several different ways depending on the distances involved.\n\nFor close stars, we look at where the star appears to be in the sky at times about half a year apart. Think of looking at your outstretched thumb through your left eye, and then your right eye. The thumb appears to be in a different position with respect to a distant building. In the same way, a star will appear to be in a slightly different position when we look at it from different ends of the earth's orbit. The amount of shift depends on the distance to the star and that allows us to figure out the distance. This method is called paralax.\n\nFor slightly more distant stars, we look at clusters of stars and measure their apparent motion across the sky over a course of *years*. Just as train tracks appear to converge at the horizon, the motions of the star will appear to converge. The rate of convergence is related to how far away the cluster is.\n\nWith these methods, we get enough stars to do statistical analyses of the brightness of the stars versus their chemical composition and other aspects of their spectrum. With this knowledge, we can estimate the distances to further stars by just comparing their spectrum to that of already measured stars. Scientific models of stars are used at this stage.\n\nFarther away than this, we look for 'standard candles', that is, stars of known brightness. By comparing the brightness they appear to be versus their actual brightness, we can estimate their distances. A particular type of 'standard candles' are the Cepheid variables. Their actual brightness depends on how fast they vibrate. Since we can see these stars in other galaxies, we can use them to determine the distances to those galaxies.\n\nFinally, after we know the ditances to some galaxies, we can measure the rate at which they move apart as a function of distance. By measure red-shift (hence speed) of more distant galaxies, we can determine their distances.
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It is approximately 2.2 million light years away.  A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles (9,460,800,000,000 kilometers), so multiply this by 2.2 million and you have the distance in miles/kilometers.
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The distances between stars is quite large .The general convention of Kilometers or miles cannot be used due o the large numbers that we would have to deal with .\nLight is defined to have a constant speed of 299792458m/s . This number is precise to the last digit .The distance trvelled by light in a year can be found using this velocity\nthe distance would be 299792458*60*60*24*365= a large number suitable to denote lage distances \nwhen we say that the distance is 5000 ly we do not wait for light to complete the  journey .We determine distances using a different method and then use the above number to find th distance
897581
Stars near the north pole seem as if they are moving in a circle around the point in the sky that would be directly up.  You can find pics of this on a lot of astronomy websites.  Here is en elapsed time photo of the north pole at night:  http://astro.wsu.edu/worthey/astro/html/im-sky/north-pole-star-trails.jpg
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Far less than a light year!\n\nConsidering that Pluto is on average about 5913520000 Km from the Sun and that 1 LY equals 9460800000000 Km, you have that Pluto is 0,000625055 LY far from the Sun.\n\nYes, 1 LY is a huge distance.
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The distances to stars closer than about 150 light years can be measured directly by use of parallax.  The position of the star against background stars is measured at times 1/2 year apart, and then it is a simple mathematical procedure to determine the distance (you have a side and two angles of a triangle--the angular distance the star appears to move at it's distance over 1/2 year equals 186 million miles-the diameter of the orbit of the earth).  \n\nStars farther than that cannot be measured directly.  But, by use of knowledge about how bright a star should be (on average) for it's spectral type (which loosely is governed by its mass) an estimate of its intrinsic brightness can be made, and then by looking at how bright it appears, it's distance can be estimated.\n\nCepheid variables are used, as well, but mostly to determine the distances to groups of stars and of other galaxies.  Incidentally, the North Star (Polaris, or Alpha Ursa Minor) is a cepheid variable.\n\nNovae and supernovae tend to have average intrinsic brightnesses, so their apparent brightness in, say, a distant galaxy, tells us (within limits) it's distance.\n\nRed shift is used for objects outside our galaxy because the amount of red shift within our galaxy would be extremely small (it increases with distance) if it were not totally overcome by the gravity of the galaxy.
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The Earth's orbit is slightly elliptical.  When it is closest to the Sun it is a distance of 91.4 million miles.  At it's furthest it is 94.5m miles.  The distance between the Earth and the Sun is also known as 1AU (astronomical unit).