TIME TRAVEL Here’s how far back in time you’re going when you look at your favourite constellations

Star-gazers, have you ever stopped to wonder how far back in time you're looking when you gaze up at the night sky?

source The Sun

It's decades, centuries, or even a millennia in some cases – because light takes huge amounts of time to travel across the universe before it finally reaches your eye.

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The light from some stars isn't even from the same millennium as us

A new interactive graphic charting the light from each of the 12 zodiacs reveals that stars in the constellations have been shining from as far back as 982 BC - in the case of Mu Sagittarii (which corresponds to the star sign Sagittarius).

That's a gob-smacking 3,000 light years away.

Iota1 Scorppi, scorpio, is the second oldest, with its light leaving in 88 AD, placing it 1,930 light years away from us. And Eta Leonis (Leo) dates back to 718 AD.

To put that in perspective, a light year is the distance light travels in one earth year, which is almost 6 trillion miles.

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These stars are still trillions of miles away from earth, but they're still closer than some of the others

Also, one light year is 25 million times farther than the moon, or over 60,000 times farther than the sun.

To keep your head from exploding, let's look at some of the stars that aren't as far back in time.

The star Beta Germinorum (Gemini) has its light originating from 1984 and Beta Leonis (also from Leo) is from 1982.

It's already been a big year for astronomy buffs, thanks to the lunar eclipse and the appearance of the super blue moon.

But why stop there when you can travel back in time every night by simply gazing up at the sky?