Binocular in time

Wouldn’t it be great if you could buy a binocular that allowed you to see into the future? That would be one binocular sale few of us would want to miss. Okay, if technology can’t swing a binocular that sees into the future, how about a binocular that can see into the past?

Actually, any binocular can see into the past if you aim said binocular toward the sky at night. The light we see from stars, nebulae, star clusters and galaxies has been traveling for many years before we see the image it carries, simply because all these objects are so enormously distant by our standards. Even the light from our nearest star neighbor beyond the sun, Proxima Centauri, has taken almost four years to reach us and, as the stellar neighborhood goes, that is the house right next door. Given that astronomy binoculars are capable of seeing objects that require light to travel for many millions of years before the light and the images it carries reaches us, we can truly claim that a binocular can see into the past. Think of it this way: that image we detect in our binoculars may be millions of years old and not at all representative of its actual condition of the object at this point in space-time. Indeed, some of those stars may already be dead and we won’t know it for millions of years. That's how long the news, carried on a beam of light, will take to reach us

Next clear night, grab your binoculars/time machine and have a look.