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Space: Have we been miscalculating the amount of stars in any given Galaxy?

Posted on | October 17, 2009 | No Comments

Diagram illustrating the proportion of small to big stars in certain galaxiesI think we all can share at least one collective moment in our lives; the moment when we all looked up into the night sky and gazed in awe at our universe peering back at us. For many the actual counting of stars quickly becomes a chore as there are more stars in the night sky as there are grains of sand on any given beach on Earth.

When counting “stars” we most likely counting an entire galaxy of stars or quite possibly 1 absolutely gigantic star. The diagram on the side, (from http://nasa.gov),  is  a perfect example of how we can mistake or miscount the proportions of stars above to a particular galaxy.

According to the data from, NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile have shown that, in some cases, there can be as many as four times more small stars compared to large ones.

Incredible.

Above we see thousands and thousands of smaller yellow(ish) stars next to 1 gigantic blue monster of a star that pales in the comparision of some of the largest stars in the entire known universe. (talk about feeling small. eh?) The bright blue stars are roughly 20 times the size of our own sun, with a mass and gravity that is beyond any human comprehension! The old way for calculating the amount of stars in a galaxy would be 500 small stars to 1 huge star. With new analysis, that number has grown by a factor of 4, meaning that for every 1 giant star there are 2,000 smaller ones. Pretty wild and completely inconceivably huge in terms of relative scale to a man.

Want to read the original article? Adding up stars.

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