How many start in the milky way

This was concluded based on calculations done on a galaxies mass in general. Galaxies that have more stars are naturally brighter, but the calculation of mass is what gives them away in terms of star numbers. However, two things hinder these calculations. First, some stars are quite massive and may account for bigger numbers of stars falsely. You might consider our Sun an average-sized star in the best-case scenario. Stephenson is the largest star discovered in the Universe since If this hypergiant star would replace our Sun, then its photosphere would reach the orbit of Saturn.

This star is quite young, a little over 10 million years old, and due to its current stellar evolution, it will grow even bigger. If you want to visualize this, take into consideration, Saturn is, on average, around 9. Most of the mass will be made up of dark matter , a type of matter that emits no light but which is believed to make up most of the mass of the universe. With much of the remaining "stuff" in the galaxy made up of diffuse gas and dust, Kornreich estimated that about 3 percent of the galaxy's mass will be made up of stars, but that could vary.

Further, the size of the stars itself can greatly vary from something that is the size of our sun, to something dozens of times smaller or bigger. The number of stars is approximately …. So is there any way to figure out how many stars are for sure? In the end, it comes down to an estimate. In one calculation, the Milky Way has a mass of about billion solar masses, so it is easiest to translate that to billion stars. This accounts for the stars that would be bigger or smaller than our sun, and averages them out.

However, the mass is tough to calculate — other estimates have said the galaxy has a mass of between billion and billion solar masses. ESA says Gaia will map 1 percent of the stellar content in the Milky Way , which puts the estimate of the total stars in our galaxy at billion. Gaia's goal is to make the best-ever three-dimensional map of the Milky Way. The caveat, Kornreich said, is that these numbers are approximations. More advanced models can make the approximation more accurate, but it would be very difficult to count the stars one by one and tell you for sure how many are in the galaxy.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space. Elizabeth Howell is a contributing writer for Space. Our best estimates tell us that the Milky Way is made up of approximately billion stars.

These stars form a large disk whose diameter is about , light years. Our Solar System is about 25, light years away from the center of our galaxy — we live in the suburbs of our galaxy.

It takes million years for our Sun and the solar system to go all the way around the center of the Milky Way. We can only take pictures of the Milky Way from inside the galaxy, which means we don't have an image of the Milky Way as a whole.

Why do we think it is a barred spiral galaxy, then? There are several clues. The first clue to the shape of the Milky Way comes from the bright band of stars that stretches across the sky and, as mentioned above, is how the Milky Way got its name. This band of stars can be seen with the naked eye in places with dark night skies. That band comes from seeing the disk of stars that forms the Milky Way from inside the disk, and tells us that our galaxy is basically flat. It becomes really tough to know the exact size of distant stars.

So scientists usually update this data. Here we have only listed 10 famous and possibly largest milky way stars with their names and numbers. You may also like reading the below-related articles for star-size Here is the list of the 10 most massive star names in our milky way galaxy. This list is described in order of decreasing the solar mass. So, these were the list of stars in the milky way galaxy with their names and numbers. Though these lists get updated with time.

Because these lists depend on many factors such as size, mass, distance. And these factors change with new discoveries or due to changes in methods. And also these stars are distant objects, so scientists usually give an approximate value Nothing is Exact in Astronomy. Still, this is the latest update in and we will always try to update the list of milky way galaxy stars.

If you have liked reading about the milky way stars list, then you can check some below articles relevant to it. Article Contents hide. Distance light-years.