how many stars are there?

silverharp

My hazy memory has it that there are 100bn starts in our galaxy and that there are 100bn galaxies. Also I have seen it written that there are as many stars as grains of sand in all the beaches... all the way up to that there are a 100 stars for every grain of sand on all the beaches, which is more accurate?

as a side question , is there agreement that the number of galaxies is known/ guessed at is right in broad terms? or is the number growing based on newer oservations?

Duiske

how many stars are there?

Thats a question that will never be answered. I think that the number of stars in our own milky way is now guesstimated at something like 200bn, and our galaxy appears to be about average size. There are dwarf galaxies with something like 10 million stars, and then irregular galaxies with possibly more than a trillion stars.

As for the number of galaxies, somewhere between 100bn and 1 trillion seem to be the accepted estimate.

So, somewhere between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion stars in the Universe is probably as close as we are going to get to an answer.

Hope that narrows it down a little for you.

silverharp

Duiske wrote: »

Thats a question that will never be answered. I think that the number of stars in our own milky way is now guesstimated at something like 200bn, and our galaxy appears to be about average size. There are dwarf galaxies with something like 10 million stars, and then irregular galaxies with possibly more than a trillion stars.

As for the number of galaxies, somewhere between 100bn and 1 trillion seem to be the accepted estimate.

So, somewhere between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion stars in the Universe is probably as close as we are going to get to an answer.

Hope that narrows it down a little for you.

thanks. I contemplate that the next time I'm walking on the beach:D

slade_x

We dont know, there are up to an estimated 400 billion probable stars in the milky way. and an estimation of up to anywhere between 100 to 500 billion galaxies in the universe.

even now our view of the entire universe is still obscured, with better technology, observations, etc. the number could reduce or increase.

There could be as many galaxies as stars in our milky way. but that isnt a standard to go by to reach a result, as not all galaxies are the same size, for example our galaxy could contain up to 500 billion stars where as Andromeda is estimated to contain up to 1 trillion stars.

bombs away

Gotta ask yourself so, if we are the only intelligent life in the Universe it's a hell of a waste of space

djhaxman

The galaxy IC1011 in the Abell 2029 cluster is 6 million light years across and is estimated to contain 100 trillion stars. It's the largest galaxy known to us at the minute, but that means nothing as we're only skimming the surface of what we know about the universe.

As for the answer to the thread title, let's just say it's a number that is so big it's incomprehensible to the human brain.

Kevster

silverharp wrote: »

Also I have seen it written that there are as many stars as grains of sand in all the beaches... all the way up to that there are a 100 stars for every grain of sand on all the beaches, which is more accurate?

As I am aware, that 'grain of sand' expression actually goes something like this: There are MUCH more stars out there than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth. If you peer into any 'spec' of space for long enough to accumulate the light [coming from that spec], you'll be presented with an innumerable amount of galaxies, each containing whatever amount of stars.