Light has traveled 11,830,560,000,000,000 miles since Jesus was born

[popsift]

Light has travelled approximately 11,830,560,000,000,000 miles since Jesus was born. Anyone have an idea of what stars or galaxies are near there or is it way out of our visibility range?

[Jesse_Ray]

I think you lost sight of the big picture when you put the number in terms of miles. The light emitted at the time of the death of Jesus has traveled some 1,978 light-years (that number equals 2011 AD minus 33 AD). The distance is gargantuan, but compare it to the distances that astronomers and cosmologists deal with everyday. For example, Andromeda is the closest galaxy to our own and it wheels through space at about 2,540,000 light-years away. That puts things into perspective! 1,978 light years from Earth is not even outside our own galaxy. The distance is gargantuan from one perspective, but not even a drop in the bucket from another perspective. I do not know the distances of many stars, but for what it's worth, Deneb (the 19th brightest star in the night sky) is about 1,400 light years away.

[dkokelley]

The farthest we are capable of observing from earth is about 43 billion light years away. 2,010 light years is well inside our galaxy. I'm not sure exactly what we can see at about that range, though.