Norman Hoskins age 11, of Seattle, Wash.

How many stars are there in the Milky Way?

The Milky Way is the vast Galaxy in which our Solar System is but a drop in the bucket. It is a huge cartwheel of stars about 100,000 light years in diameter ‑ and a light year is equal to about six million, million miles. When we look at the pale hoop of glimmering light over the sky we are looking edgewise across the stars of the Milky Way.

No one has ever counted these stars one by one. Besides, hosts of them are hidden behind clouds of dark gases. But experts have estimated the number of stars in the Milky Way to be around 100 billion. They have also estimated that there are about one million, million similar galaxies scattered throughout the vast reaches of space ‑ and each one of these galaxies has its own quota of billions of stars.