Can we talk about how many stars are actually in that Andromeda photo? I looked it up and the number is way lower than I expected.

Saw that popular shot of the Andromeda Galaxy from the Hubble. Everyone in the comments was saying 'billions of stars.' I got curious and checked the NASA page. The visible part in most photos? It's more like one trillion. That's a huge difference. It's not billions, it's a thousand times more. Found it on their official 'Messier 31' fact sheet. Makes you realize how big space really is. Has anyone else checked the stats on their favorite space pics and been surprised?

3 comments

3 Comments

tessa9221mo ago

I always just repeated the "billions" line too, it's what you always hear. Seeing the actual trillion number from NASA really messed with my sense of scale. It makes our own galaxy seem smaller, and that's already impossible to picture. The size of space is the kind of fact that just breaks your brain for a minute.

sandra14624d ago

Forget the size, tessa922, the part that gets me is the time. Light from most of those trillion galaxies will never reach us because space is expanding too fast. So that insane number is also a list of places we are literally, physically locked out of ever seeing or knowing. It's not just big, it's permanently out of reach, which feels way more lonely than just a big number.

shah.evan1mo ago

A trillion galaxies, tessa922? That's a number my brain can't even hold.