400 Billion Stars

''' How Many Stars are in the Milky Way? '''

When you look up into the night sky, it seems like you can see a lot of stars. There are about 2,500 stars visible to the naked eye at any one point at any one time on the Earth, and 5,800-8,000 total visible stars. But this is a very tiny fraction of the stars the Milky Way is thought to have! Astronomers estimate that there are 200 billion to 400 billion stars contained within the Milky Way.

Why can we only see so few of these stars? Our Solar System is located within the disk of the Milky Way, which is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 100,000 light years across. We are about 30,000 light years from the galactic center. That means there is a lot of distance – and a lot of stars – between us and the other side of the galaxy. When looking out at all of these stars, even closer stars that are relatively bright can get washed out by the light of brighter stars behind them. If you’re up for counting a few of the stars, check out this mosaicfrom NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/22380/how-many-stars-are-in-the-milky-way/#ixzz2SSMB2GDm