The news that there are now estimated to be 1.6 planets, on average, for each star in the Milky Way did not really surprise me. http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Astronomers–More-Planets-than-Stars/story.xhtml?story_id=030000NUSR0C&full_skip=1 In the past few years, astronomers have confirmed over 700 exo-planets outside our solar system.
“We’re finding an exciting potpourri of things we didn’t even think could exist,” said Harvard University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger. “We’re awash in planets where 17 years ago we weren’t even sure there were planets” outside our solar system, said Kaltenegger.
I have blogged that our galaxy, the Milky Way, has anywhere from 200 to 600 billion stars. It’s the numbers that boggle my mind. Obviously no one has done a hand count of them. Below is a composite image of this galaxy of ours, courtesy of Harvard University. Click on for a bigger picture.
Even if there were only a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, if one COULD count each one, a second at a time, a mere 31,536,000 stars would be logged in a year. To put this into biblical perspective, if the astrologers of King David’s time had begun the count, their descendants might be wrapping up the tally about now. If the number of stars in the Milky Way were 200 billion, mankind wouldn’t have even begun to write the history of such a colossal undertaking.
Just viewing a globular cluster of stars leaves one breathless.
I took an image of M15 earlier this month. M15 can be observed with binoculars or a small telescope, appearing as a fuzzy star. I imaged it for three minutes, and even then, the center appears too congested to identify single stars. This star cluster is one of the most densely packed globulars known in the Milky Way. Its core has undergone a contraction known as core collapse and it has a central density cusp with an enormous number of stars surrounding what may be a central black hole. Lying some 40,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, M15 is one of nearly 150 known globular clusters that form a vast halo surrounding our Milky Way galaxy. Each of these spherically shaped clusters contains hundreds of thousands of ancient stars. The stars in M15 and other globular clusters are estimated to be about 12 billion years old. They were among the first generations of stars to form in the Milky Way.
Click on for a larger view.
The universe, as we know it today, contains about 350 billion galaxies, and the distances between each are virtually incomprehensible.
“We’re finding an exciting potpourri of things we didn’t even think could exist,” said Harvard University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger. “We’re awash in planets where 17 years ago we weren’t even sure there were planets” outside our solar system, said Kaltenegger.
I have blogged that our galaxy, the Milky Way, has anywhere from 200 to 600 billion stars. It’s the numbers that boggle my mind. Obviously no one has done a hand count of them. Below is a composite image of this galaxy of ours, courtesy of Harvard University. Click on for a bigger picture.
Even if there were only a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, if one COULD count each one, a second at a time, a mere 31,536,000 stars would be logged in a year. To put this into biblical perspective, if the astrologers of King David’s time had begun the count, their descendants might be wrapping up the tally about now. If the number of stars in the Milky Way were 200 billion, mankind wouldn’t have even begun to write the history of such a colossal undertaking.
Just viewing a globular cluster of stars leaves one breathless.
I took an image of M15 earlier this month. M15 can be observed with binoculars or a small telescope, appearing as a fuzzy star. I imaged it for three minutes, and even then, the center appears too congested to identify single stars. This star cluster is one of the most densely packed globulars known in the Milky Way. Its core has undergone a contraction known as core collapse and it has a central density cusp with an enormous number of stars surrounding what may be a central black hole. Lying some 40,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, M15 is one of nearly 150 known globular clusters that form a vast halo surrounding our Milky Way galaxy. Each of these spherically shaped clusters contains hundreds of thousands of ancient stars. The stars in M15 and other globular clusters are estimated to be about 12 billion years old. They were among the first generations of stars to form in the Milky Way.
Click on for a larger view.
The universe, as we know it today, contains about 350 billion galaxies, and the distances between each are virtually incomprehensible.
