Mar 19 2012

If you ask someone: “how many stars are there in the sky?”, then you hear the standard answer - a lot, more than the hair on your head, drops in the ocean, etc. So how many?

A person with good eyesight sees stars of the so-called 6th magnitude - designated 6m. And he can see about 6000 of them, but this is in 2 hemispheres. In one there are 3000, but near the horizon the transparency of the atmosphere decreases, and about 2000 stars are visible. Just.

But if you pick up binoculars, you can already see stars of magnitude 9m - 10m, and there are about 200 thousand of them in the sky. What a difference it makes!! And in a small telescope up to 11-12m. There are 2 million stars with such brilliance. In powerful telescopes, stars up to 15-16m can be distinguished. There are more than 100 million of them.

But this is how many stars we can see, but how many of them are there in reality? There are no exact answers, but:

• There are an estimated 200 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy!
• In the neighboring Andromeda galaxy - 1 trillion - 5 times more!
• There are 100 trillion stars in the large elliptical Abell galaxy!
• The number of galaxies available to us for viewing is hundreds of billions!

So consider it. The number of stars according to current calculations is 10^24, that’s 1 followed by 24 zeros!!!

Hubble Far Field

The image shows the far field of the Hubble telescope - The stars are no longer visible individually here - that's all!!!

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. And our Sun is also a star, and a small one, but its diameter is only 1.39 million kilometers.

The solar system is located in a galaxy sometimes called the Milky Way. Astronomers agreed to write “our” Galaxy with a capital letter, and other galaxies outside our star system - with a small letter - galaxies.

M31 - Andromeda Nebula

All stars and other objects that we see with the naked eye belong to our Galaxy. The exception is the Andromeda Nebula, which is a close relative and neighbor of our Galaxy. It was by observing this galaxy that Edwin Hubble (after whom the space telescope is named) was able to “resolve” it into individual stars in 1924. After which all doubts about the physical nature of this and other galaxies, observed in the form of blurry spots - nebulae, disappeared.

Our Galaxy is about 100-120 thousand light years in size (a light year is the distance that light travels in one Earth year, approximately 9,460,730,472,580 km). Our Solar System is located approximately 27,000 light years from the center of the Galaxy, in one of the spiral arms called the Orion Arm. Since the mid-80s of the 20th century, it has been known that our Galaxy has a bridge in the center between the spiral arms. Like other stars, the Sun rotates around the center of the Galaxy at a speed of about 240 km/s (other stars have a different speed). Over a period of about 200 million years, the Sun and the planets of the solar system make a complete revolution around the center of the galaxy. This explains some phenomena in geological history The Earth, which during its existence managed to revolve around the center of the Galaxy 30 times.

Our Galaxy has the shape of a flattened disk when viewed from the side. However, this disc has irregular shape. The two satellites of our Galaxy, the Large and Small Magellanic clouds (not visible in the northern hemisphere of the Earth), distort the shape of our Galaxy through the action of their gravity.

We see our Galaxy from the inside, as if we were watching a children's carousel while sitting on one of the carousel horses. Those stars of the Galaxy that we can observe are located in the form of a strip of unequal width, which we call the Milky Way. The fact that the Milky Way, known since ancient times, consists of many faint stars, was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei, pointing his telescope at the night sky.

Astronomers believe that our Galaxy has a halo that we cannot see (“dark matter”), but which includes 90% of the mass of our Galaxy. The existence of “dark matter” not only in our Galaxy, but also in the Universe follows from theories that use Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (GTR). However, it is not yet a fact that general relativity is correct (there are other theories of gravity), so the Galactic halo may have another explanation.

There are from 200 to 400 billion stars in our Galaxy. This is not much by the standards of the Universe. There are galaxies containing trillions of stars, for example in the galaxy IC 1101 there are approximately 300 trillion.

10-15% of the mass of our Galaxy is dust and scattered interstellar gas (mainly hydrogen). Because of the dust, we see our Galaxy in the night sky as the Milky Way as a bright stripe. If dust had not absorbed light from other stars in the Galaxy, we would have seen a bright ring of billions of stars, especially bright in the constellation Sagittarius, where the center of the Galaxy is located. However, in other ranges electromagnetic waves The galactic core is clearly visible, for example, in the radio range (source Sagittarius A), infrared and x-ray.

According to the assumptions of scientists (again, associated with general relativity), at the center of our Galaxy (and most other galaxies) there is “ black hole" It is believed to have a mass of approximately 40,000 solar masses. The movement of the matter of the Galaxy towards its center creates that most powerful radiation from the center of the Galaxy, which is observed by astronomers in various ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum.

We cannot see the Galaxy from above or from the side, since we are inside it. All images of our Galaxy from the outside are the imagination of artists. However, we have a fairly good idea of ​​the appearance and shape of the Galaxy, since we can observe other spiral galaxies in the Universe, similar to ours.

The age of the Galaxy is approximately 13.6 billion years, which is not much less than the age of the entire Universe (13.7 billion years) according to scientists. The oldest stars in the galaxy are found in globular clusters; it is by their age that the age of the Galaxy is calculated.

Our Galaxy is part of a larger group of other galaxies, which we call the Local Group of Galaxies, which includes the satellites of the Galaxy Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the Andromeda Nebula (M 31, NGC 224), the Triangulum Galaxy (M33, NGC 598) and approximately 50 other galaxies . In turn, the Local Group of galaxies is part of the Virgo Supercluster, which has a size of 150 million light years.

The name of the galaxy was given so long ago that no one can say exactly when. Before the advent of electric lighting, nothing prevented people from observing the night sky, and they could not help but notice a cluster of stars that resembled spilled milk. Also in Ancient Greece There was a legend that this was milk from the breast of the goddess Hera, who fed the baby Hercules. Some of this milk spilled across the entire sky.

How many stars are there in the Milky Way?

We don't know exactly how many stars there are in our galaxy because there is no way to accurately count. Telescopes pick up only the brightest, and millions are hidden in nebulae and vortices. One way is to estimate the speed at which objects rotate around the galaxy, calculate its mass and divide by average weight stars. But scientists and astronauts believe the results are too average. The European Space Agency's satellite has recorded and located one billion stars. And scientists believe that this is only 1% of the total. The Milky Way may contain about 100 billion stars.

Milky Way - the outskirts of a huge wasteland

The Milky Way is located in one of the cosmic voids. Scientists believe that the structure of the Universe looks like a web of filled regions, connected by string-like threads, and separated by huge empty spaces. Astronomers call them voids. Ours is called the KBK-void (this name was derived from 3 astronomers - Keenan, Barger and Cowie). It is approximately 7 times the size of the average void and has a radius of approximately one billion light years.

Astronomers are trying to photograph the black hole at the center of our galaxy

In the center milky way there is a huge black hole that has a mass of more than 4 million suns. Scientists know it's there because they track the movements of bodies in the center of the galaxy and deduce that they are orbiting a supermassive object that cannot be seen. According to the researchers' plan, The Event Horizon telescope will take preliminary images of the black hole's edge in the coming months.

Small galaxies orbit the Milky Way

Explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his team in the 16th century were the first Europeans to discover two circular clusters of stars in the night sky. These formations are actually small galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. , like planets around a star. They are called the Small and Large Magellanic clouds. And they are, of course, not the only ones of their kind. Sometimes such mini-galaxies crash into ours and are swallowed up by their massive neighbor.

The Milky Way is headed for a catastrophic collision

Scientists have calculated that The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy will collide in four billion years. Most researchers believe that Andromeda will engulf our galaxy and survive because it is more massive.

Strange bubbles are coming from our galaxy

Scientists discovered them not so long ago, in 2010. These structures are truly gigantic and produce gamma radiation. They are called “Fermi Bubbles,” just like the telescope that discovered them. Last year, a team of scientists collected evidence that showed the bubbles were the result of an event that happened 6 to 9 million years ago. Then a supermassive black hole in the galactic center sucked in a huge piece of gas and dust and “spitted out” giant luminous clouds.

More about space:

Since ancient times, people have been asking the question: “How many stars are there in the sky?”

Previously, it was believed that only those who could get to heaven and calculate it themselves could find out. Although this is too exaggerated, in principle the idea was correct. Thanks to rapid development technologies and the creation of super-powerful telescopes, scientists managed to discover many new galaxies that no one had previously guessed about. Thus, it is almost impossible to name the exact number of stars located in the Universe.

It turns out that all the stars in the Universe are distributed unevenly. Basically they gather in groups and thus create galaxies. Consider, for example, our galaxy (Milky Way). In total, there are about 100 billion stars, although the Universe consists of trillions of similar galaxies.

The ancient sages were convinced that counting all the stars in the sky is the same as counting the grains of sand on all the shores of the Earth. However, if we are not interested exact numbers, then a rough estimate can be made. To do this, you will need satellite images of all the coasts on the planet, their approximate area and average layer thickness. Thus, it will be possible to find out the volume of sand on Earth, and then it must be divided by the average thickness of one grain of sand. Of course, the figure will be quite rough, but still it is not impossible.

If we return to the stars, here galaxies act as beaches. Let's say that there are about 1000 stars in the Milky Way, and the Universe consists of 1000 galaxies. Using simple mathematical calculations, you can find out how many stars there should be in the universe. Naturally, the figure will be rough, because there were many assumptions, such as the following: the size of our galaxy is average in relation to other galaxies in the Universe, etc.

It is worth noting that for many years scientists believed that there were no more than 50 billion galaxies in total, while the advent of the Hubble telescope changed this figure, or rather, more than doubled it. It should be borne in mind that even such a telescope is unable to view the entire Universe.

If you do not take into account the most distant galaxies, most of them are not visible in a telescope that operates in the optical range. They can only be seen using an infrared probe called Herschel (it was launched in the spring of 2013). It is necessary to take into account the fact that no one will count the real number of stars: ordinary measurements will be taken and a general characteristic will be compiled. Today it is estimated that there are approximately a trillion trillion stars in total.

Let's count the stars

Do you know how many stars you can count if you look at the night sky with the naked eye? Approximately 1600. This figure, however, was not obtained by counting bright points in the night sky. No, everything is much more practical. Photography, computer counting - these are the methods for determining quantity visible stars. But visible objects are nothing compared to what is not visible to the eye.

What man has been observing for several millennia in the sky is only a small part of the Milky Way, our Galaxy. Being inside, moreover, on the edge of one of the arms, it is impossible to directly observe other objects of the Galaxy. Fortunately, scientists have created powerful telescopes and other devices that make it possible to observe outer space far beyond our borders solar system. In addition to direct observation, physical and mathematical approaches are used to determine the number of stars in our Galaxy. You can read more about the stars on this resource spacegid.com

So how many stars are there in our Galaxy? Different sources give different figures, from 200 to 400 billion. As already mentioned, it is not possible to see every star. Therefore the following method is used. The amount of light produced by a galaxy is measured. This light is then converted into mass. Our Galaxy has 78 billion solar masses. If all the stars were like our Sun, then the conclusion would be simple, 78 billion stars. But the fact of the matter is that stars are different. They can differ in weight, age, and composition of matter. For example, a star that is 2 times more massive than our Sun shines on average 16 times brighter. And if the mass of the star is 10 times greater than the Sun, then the luminosity will be 10,000 times stronger. It follows from this that we need to know how many and what kind of stars there are in our Galaxy. Studying this question has revealed the most common type of star. The mass of such an average star is equal to 1/3 the mass of the Sun. It turns out that our Galaxy contains 234 billion such stars.

Astrophysicists are constantly searching for answers to the most difficult questions regarding the structure of the cosmos. Space science is developing very dynamically thanks to new technologies and unabated interest in this discipline. Therefore, we still have many new discoveries ahead and, perhaps, our idea of ​​​​the number of stars in the Milky Way will change more than once.

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