our teacher told us ‘that when you are looking at stars you are looking at the past’ but how does the light of the dead

Question: our teacher told us 'that when you are looking at stars you are looking at the past' but how does the light of the dead star stay visible to the earth if it no longer produces light?
- Keywords:
  dead,
  earth,
  light,
  stars,
  visible
Asked by Yasmin to Tom on 10 Mar 2015.
- Thomas Barrett answered on 10 Mar 2015:
  
  Great question. It is to do with how long it takes for the light to travel to here. We use a measurement of distance called a light year to work this out. If something was 1 light year away it would take the fastest thing in the universe (light in a vacuum) 1 whole year to travel that distance.
  
  Now if we think bigger so these stars we are seeing can many many light years away. So far in fact that some of them may have died but their light is still traveling towards us.
  
  So we really are looking at what that star was doing thousands of years ago.
  
  fun fact – The sun is 8 light minutes away. So technically when you see the sun that is actually the sun from 8 minutes in the past 😛

Question: our teacher told us 'that when you are looking at stars you are looking at the past' but how does the light of the dead star stay visible to the earth if it no longer produces light?