COUNTS ABOUT 842,000,000 STARS.

Mataura Ensign, 16 December 1911, Page 5

COUNTS ABOUT 842,000,000 STARS.

A tremendous task, that of counting the stars up to the nineteenth magnitude, has been undertaken by the Dutch astronomer Professor Kapteyn, who has collected all the material furnished by the most recent discoveries. Stars of less size than the fourteenth magnitude are found in millions in the Milky Way, and the work of" counting them from photographic plates can best be described as similar to counting blood corpuscles under a microscope. Professor Kapteyn places the total at 842.000,000 stars, the average being 20,400 stars to the square degree of the heavens.. He has further calculated that the total light emanating from all the stars is equal to 2384 times the luminosity of a star of the first magnitude. According to the Dutch scientist the boundaries of the universe, so far as human science has been able to penetrate, extend to 32,000 light years.