Light travels at a speed which is about a million times faster than the speed of sound. In one second, light travels about 300,000km, but sound travels only 344m. You can get some idea of this difference by watching the start of a race. If you stand some distance away from the starter, you can see smoke come from his gun before the sound reaches your ears. This great speed of light produces some strange facts. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach us. If you look at the light of the moon tonight, remember that the light rays left the moon 1.3 seconds before they reached you. The nearest star is so far away that the light which you can see from it tonight started to travel towards you four years ago at a speed of nearly 2 million km per minute. In some cases the light from one of tonight's stars started on its journey to you before you were born. Thus, if we want to be honest, we cannot say " The stars are shining tonight." We have to say, " The stars look pretty. They were shining four years ago but their light has only just reached Earth." The scientific way of saying " The stars are shining tonight" should be  _  .
the stars have been shining all the time. the stars seen tonight will be shining four years later. the stars were shining long ago but are seen tonight. the starlight seen today could be seen four years ago.