With the first telescope the number of stars increased to approximately 27172. But, even then was reallyjust a start.

Even with a moremodern telescopes on earth (like one at the Miller Observatory made in 1976 in Maiden, North Carolina (USA)), you can’t see all the stars. The air limits what your telescope can see.

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Today’s Definition

A black body is an idealized body that is a perfect radiator and perfect absorber of electromagnetic radiation. A black body not only absorbs all wavelengths of energy and radiates at all wavelengths, but it does this at the maximum possible intensity for any given temperature. It doesn’t necessarily look black. A star is a good approximation to a black body since stellar gases are very good absorbers of energy.

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 The light from houses and businesses called light pollution, diminishes the ability to see the stars. That is why most modern telescopes are usually away from cities on high mountains. But even that limits our vision.

The unimaginable number of galaxies that were known took a huge jump with the first telescopes in space. Without the atmosphere those who study the stars finally got a real idea of the real number of stars in the sky.

In fact, Carl Sagan estimated that there were 100 billion galaxies in the universe. If you can consider that there are about 31067 stars in your average diet, you are just starting to get a real understanding of how many stars that were considered to exist then.

These quotes will give you an idea of how the number of estimated galaxies has increased:

“Our telescopes can see many billion of them within reach of modern instruments.” – Morrison, David, Sidney Wolff & Andrew Fraknoi. Exploration of the Universe, 7th ed. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1995: 7.

“It is composed of stars grouped into galaxies about a hundred billion galaxies in the universe.” – Fisher, David. The Origin and Evolution of Our Own Particular Universe. New York: Macmillan, 1988: 60.

“The Hubble Space Telescope has found there may be 125 billion galaxies in the universe.” – Galaxy Estimate Up To 125 Billion. Far News. Far Shores. citation of South China Morning Post. 9 January 1999.

Now in fact, a german supercomputer estimates that there are probably 500 billion galaxies. If we take the number 40,000 stars per galaxy, that would make 2 X 10 ^ 16 stars.