If you put a mirror on a star, what would you see?

Question

Say you put a mirror on a star exactly one light-year away, and then looked at the mirror through an incredibly powerful telescope, what would you see? Your reflection as it is at that very moment or your reflection in a year or what? I base this question on the knowledge that if you look at a star a light-year away, you are seeing the light that left it a year ago. Its just a silly hypothetical, but its been getting on my nerves as even my science teacher won't answer it and my mates can't answer it :D

Answer 1

you cannot put a mirror on a star in the first place. literaly.

Answer 2

Just to make things clear u can't put a mirror on a star, i hope i don't have to explain why, but if some1 had the knowhow and equipment to have put a mirror on a star a light-year away about  a few thousand years ago and got there today and  that super powered telescope was just invented u would still have to w8 a year to see what you look like today, talk about being late on your first date. If that mirror was not on a star and on a planet or asteroid or any other non-self -illuminate celestial body you would have to add the time it takes for the light from the closest star that actually is close enough to light the mirror enough to see your reflection, which i don't think would ever exceed a week seeing planets orbit around suns(stars)  

Answer 3

Oh i know what you mean. You want to know if the image on the mirror is you 1 year b4 or just you at present looking through the scope correct?? In that case it would be you at the present when your looking at the telescope. That light has to travel 1 years so. If after 2(going and coming back for the light )  year you go and look at the mirror you would see yourself 1 years ago looking throught the telescope.

Nice question.

Answer 4

OK, let's ignore the impracticalities, eg. if you put a mirror on a star it would be vapourised, and to get back to earth you would have to travel at less than the speed of light, etc.

If you pointed a telescope at a mirror 1 light year away you would see the spot where you are standing as it looked 2 years ago (2 years because the light has to go there and back). Actually you would just see empty space because the earth will be in a different position.

Answer 5

Since it would take a year for the light to reflect off you, and one year for you to see the light reflected off the mirror, it would take 2 years.

Answer 6

Light reflected from your body would take a light year to get to the star.   The reflection from the mirror would take another light year to get back to you.  It would therefore take two light years to get back to what's left of you.

Answer 7

you would see yourself exactly as you were 2 years ago (assuming you could even see it) it takes a year for the light to travel to and hit the mirror, then another year for the reflected light to travel back to you.  

Answer 8

If you had some kinda super mirror that was VERY VERY large so as to drown out the brightness of the star while not being vaporized and a telescope bordering on impossibility than the whole concept would work. Since light is already reaching this hypothetical star one light year away it would begin reflecting light immediately back to Earth. The light from Earth would have had to travel one light year to get to the mirror and then one light year coming back. That means the image we see on Earth would have been Earth two years ago. If either A: you went faster than light to put it there and get back or B: another civilization built the mirror for us without us having to travel there then we would see an Earth at most one year older than the mirror itself.