It’s so absurdly big. Our galaxy (the Milky Way) is estimated to have between 100 and 400 billion stars in it. For a long time we thought our galaxy was all there was, it wasn’t until 1925 when Edwin Hubble was able to prove that M31 was not a nebula or cluster of stars in our galaxy, but in fact an entirely different galaxy altogether that we realized there are more galaxies out there.
Look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field picture
This was a taken by pointing the Hubble Space Telescope at a basically empty bit of space 2.4 by 2.4 arcminutes in size (for comparison, the moon has an apparent size of about 30 arcminutes, or half a degree). So an absolutely tiny part of the sky. It contains about 10.000 galaxies.
The observable universe is estimated to have between 200 billion and 2 trillion galaxies in it, with on average about 100 billion stars per galaxy. It’s absolutely mind blowing.
It’s so absurdly big. Our galaxy (the Milky Way) is estimated to have between 100 and 400 billion stars in it. For a long time we thought our galaxy was all there was, it wasn’t until 1925 when Edwin Hubble was able to prove that M31 was not a nebula or cluster of stars in our galaxy, but in fact an entirely different galaxy altogether that we realized there are more galaxies out there.
Look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field picture
This was a taken by pointing the Hubble Space Telescope at a basically empty bit of space 2.4 by 2.4 arcminutes in size (for comparison, the moon has an apparent size of about 30 arcminutes, or half a degree). So an absolutely tiny part of the sky. It contains about 10.000 galaxies.
The observable universe is estimated to have between 200 billion and 2 trillion galaxies in it, with on average about 100 billion stars per galaxy. It’s absolutely mind blowing.