How Many Stars Are Really Visible?
<p>Tucked into a sleeping bag under the stars in the mountains of Northern California as a kid, I marveled at the Milky Way, a magical yet real cosmic river of fuzzy brightness punctuated by points of light both faint and bright. I’d count the sparkling gems in a patch of sky through towering pines, invariably losing track after just a few.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen a sky like that in decades. But I remember thinking I must’ve been looking at <em>millions</em> of stars.</p>
<p>Not even close!</p>
<p>There are some<a href="http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/07/22/how-many-stars-in-the-milky-way/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank"> 100 billion to 400 billion stars</a> in our Milky Way Galaxy. But almost all are too dim to see with the naked eye. In fact, the visible light of the vast majority of those burning balls of hydrogen and helium, obscured by interstellar gas and dust, doesn’t reach even our most powerful telescopes.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/aha-science/how-many-stars-are-really-visible-0404d150c1fb"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>
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