• Question: How many stars are in the Milky Way? - Tom

    Asked by Tom Delahoyde to Peter on 13 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Peter Boorman

      Peter Boorman answered on 13 Nov 2016:

      Hi Tom,

      Great question! We’ve estimated that the Milky Way contains somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars. These stars are probably about as heavy as 100 billion of our own Sun. Strangely though, this only makes up a very small amount of the stuff in the Milky Way. ‘Dark matter’ in the Milky Way is predicted to be as heavy as about 1 trillion Suns!

      Peter

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