How many stars do we see?

2003/07/23 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Astronomia

If a man looked to the sky in the darkest part of Earth and counted the stars he saw, he would say there are about 5,000 stars. Instead, if he did the same in a bright city, he would only see 100.

However, with the latest telescopes, numbers change a lot. In fact, a group of Australian astronomers, with the help of two of the best telescopes in the world, have counted how many stars there are in the universe we are able to see: seventy thousand trillion stars (70x1021).

The telescopes of the Anglo-Australian Observatory in northern New South Wales and the Canary Islands have been used for this calculation. These telescopes have focused on a part of the universe and have accurately measured the light received from it. According to this light they have calculated the number of stars
in that segment of verses and deduced the number of stars in the universe we are able to see. It has not been, therefore, slow work!

The measurement was reported at the general meeting of the International Astronomical Union.