So how many stars are there? Given all of the above, astronomers estimate that the Milky Way contains around 100 billion stars, and there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

Q How many galaxies are in the universe? — Gus Powvens, Madison, Wis. A Jim Lattis, director of the UW Space Place at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: Galaxies are clouds of stars that range in ...

For decades, scientists engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have probed the galaxy for signs of ...

Lacki suggests detecting the combined glow of the emissions of several civilizations. It’s an approach that comes with its ...

If there is an absolute law in the universe, it’s that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Space is big, and ...

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists found that many galaxies started as thick discs before forming the thin discs we see now. This discovery helps answer a long-standing mystery ...

That also helped explain a previous puzzle in the sizing of black holes in the early universe. Many of the larger AGNs found in previous studies had seemed to be too big for their galaxies, while the ...

Gauging the mass of a black hole is tricky, but astronomers have devised multiple methods to measure the heft of these galactic gluttons ...

An analysis of the afterglow of the big bang sheds light on how black holes distribute mass in the universe, and why some ...

Galaxies are clouds of stars that range in both size and composition. Some contain hundreds of millions of stars while the largest galaxies can contain trillions of stars. And while it’s not entirely ...