Question & Answer

Question & Answer

Q: How many stars are in our galaxy?

The Answer

Last update 2024.07.23

Weather of Arabia - Astronomers do not know the exact number of stars in each of these two trillion galaxies, because most of them are very far away and there is no way to know this accurately. It is common knowledge that astronomers estimate the number of stars in the galaxy based on their mass, although this method is not free from problems. Difficulties: The influence of dark matter and galactic rotation must be filtered out before the estimation can be made.

Some estimates indicate that the Milky Way Galaxy contains 100 billion “solar masses,” or 100 billion times the mass of the Sun. Averaged over the types of stars within our galaxy, this results in a figure of about 100 billion stars in the galaxy, with this number potentially changing depending on the number of stars larger and smaller than our Sun.

Using the Milky Way as a model, we can multiply the number of stars in a typical galaxy (100 billion) by the number of galaxies in the universe (2 trillion), giving us a staggering estimate of the number of stars in the universe at about 200 billion trillion stars, or in other words 200 sextillion stars.

According to The Conversation website, this number is so large, it is difficult to imagine; That's about 10 times the number of cups of water in all of Earth's oceans.

How many stars are in our galaxy?