• Question: How many stars are there in space?

    Asked by matty23 to Catherine, Adam, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by igloo23, littlechatterbox, nazia1999.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      We think there’s something like a billion galaxies in the universe and each one probably has a billion stars in, so something like a billion billion!

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      We can’t count them! It may be a billion billion, or it might be thousands of times more.

      The problem is, the further away they are, the fainter they are. Years ago, some scientists pointed a powerful telescope into a completely dark square of space, and this is what they saw:

      http://farinteriors.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html

      So even the ’empty’ bits are full of stars and galaxies!

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Billions and billions, as Carl Sagan would put it.

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      Almost more than we could imagine. There are billions of galaxies and billions of stars in each galaxy, but it is hard to find every galaxy.

Comments