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Friday, 29 June 2018

I wonder why we can only see 5,000 stars

I wonder why we can only see 5,000 stars when there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the observable universe. Our galaxy, the milky way has approximately  100 billion stars in it. We cant see them all because light travels at a finite speed. Light has only had around 13.7 billion years to travel. Meaning we cannot see stars any further than 13.7 billion light years away.
The Cygnus Wall in the North American Nebula, NGC 7000. Image credit: Ken Crawford, under a c.c.a.-s.a.-4.0 international license.
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous29 June 2018 at 08:56

    From your post I have learned that we cannot see stars further than 13.7 billion light years away. I wonder if we can travel that far.

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