What kinds of numbers are we talking about?
Hmmmm, let's be more precise and ask the question,
Well, in one hour,
the star moves a distance of 36,000 kilometers at most. If the
closest star, Proxima Centauri, moved at this speed, would we be
able to see the motion? To figure this out, we need to
know the distance to Proxima Centauri. Proxima
Centauri is about
10
kilometers from us. So, the angular distance it moves in one hour is
This works out to
= 2
degrees or around
one-millionth of one arc second!!.
Such a tiny angle is not
measureable with the unaided human eye over reasonable time scales!!!
Stars appear to be stationary on the sky because of their exceedingly large distances.