To the naked eye, the stars look like tiny points of light . But stars are not tiny—they're huge, burning balls of gas, like our Sun. They just appear small because they are so far away. The nearest star to our solar system is 4 light years away, which is 20 trillion miles. he stars may all look the same distance away, as if they were pasted on the wall of a giant dome. But that's an illusion too. Some stars are tens of thousands of light years farther away from Earth than others. You can see this illusion for yourself by building your own Big Dipper.