THE NUMBER OF STARS IN OUR UNIVERSE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1662, 14 September 1887, Page 2

THE NUMBER OF STARS IN OUR UNIVERSE

M. Hermlte, a French astronomer, baa made some curious mathematical observations concerning the number of the stars. Acoording to his computations, the total number of stars visible to the naked eye nf an obsarver of average visual power does not exceed 6000. The northern hemisphere contains 2478, and tha southern hemisphere contains 3307 stars. Iv order to see this number of stars, the night mu»t be moonless, tha sky cloudless, and the atmosphere pure. Here ihe power of the unaided eye stops. An opera ghss will bring out 20,000 ; a small telescope will bring oat at least 150,000 ; and the most powerful telescopes that have been constructed will show more than 100,000,000 stsrj. M. Hermite concludes that the light emitted by all the stars upon the whole aarfaot of 'ha globe ia rqual to one-tenth of the' )i*ht of the full moou. According to Sir William Sereohel, the light of the full moon iB equal to that of 27,408 stars of the firet magnitude. The light of al) the stars is therefore eqaal to 27,408 start of the first magnitude. Using these data m oarrying out the law, the astound* Idr result is reached that the sum of all the stars down to the twentieth and a half magnitude is 66 million of millions 1