The Vastness of the Universe
To know the exact dimensions of the universe is very difficult. By placing multiple zeros, we try to draw a comparison between earth and the universe around us. However, the reality is much larger than what we can imagine. If one night we were able to get away from the artificial lights of the city, which obscure the light from the stars, we would see an amazing sky above us. Without a telescope we would be able to see three thousand stars. Some stars are much larger than the sun, such as Betelgeuse which is 650 times larger than the sun: its diameter is approximately 900 million kilometers in length. The diameter of the sun is approximately 109 limes larger than that of the earth. Another point of interest is the numbers of stars that are visible on a dark night are not even a thousandth or a millionth of the stars existing in the universe. Scientists have estimated that there are 100 billion trillion stars in the universe. Furthermore, recent studies conducted using the Keck Telescope in Hawaii put the estimate to 300 sextillion (23 zeros after the number 3). This number of stars does not include other amazing celestial bodies.