Who can count the stars?

Efforts were made by the early astronomers to count the stars. These may have led to the preparation of the early catalogues and atlases of the stars.

The first star catalogue, the Almagest, was compiled by the Egyptian astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy, in second century A.D.

It had 1,028 stars.

The History of Astronomy journal argues that the Greek astronomer Hipparchus had a star catalogue some 400 years before Ptolemy. They tried to reconstruct it.

It still, however, did not show a complete work that can qualify as a catalogue under a cover as much of it was erased.

With hindsight, if it is to be called a catalogue, it may not have contained much because for centuries, the early astronomers tended to perceive stars as countable. If they were patient and diligent, there is no reason why the stars in the night sky cannot be counted, they felt.

They succeeded in counting more stars, up to a few thousands, with subsequent attempts.

In 1603, another star atlas was prepared by the German astronomer, Johann Bayer. He used Greek letters to depict the stars.

In the 18th century, the English astronomer, John Flamstead, compiled an atlas using numbers for stars. He counted about 3,000 stars.

In 1862, what was regarded as the first modern catalogue was compiled by the observatory in Bonn and had over 300,000 stars.

In 1887, some 20 or so observatories compiled a catalogue having eight to 10 million stars.

Catalogues and star atlases have long been useful in locating stars rather than counting them.

Stars are so many that they cannot be counted.

Arguably, the first authentic statement that stars are so many that they cannot be counted by man is in the Bible: Genesis 15:5, ‘And He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.”

Then He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

 

Abraham who had no child was blessed by God that he will have children and his descendants will be like the stars: No man can count them.

As it turned out, the writers of the Bible were right, or guessed right, that no man, even with all the advances in science, can count the stars.

The Bible then goes on to say only God can: Psalm 147: 4, “He determines the number of stars; He calls each of them by name.”

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has hundreds of billions of stars and scientists cannot possibly, count them.

Travelling across the diameter of the Milky Way will take 100,000 to 160,000 light years.

A galaxy is a constellation of stars revolving round a centre, held together by gravity. Scientists estimate that there may be up to two trillion galaxies, like the Milky Way, in the observable Universe.

Stars are so many and also so far away, billions of light years away, that the nearest to us (apart from our Sun) is the Proxima Centauri, which is about 40 thousand billion kilometres (25 thousand billion miles) away.

Our Sun, a medium-size star, is 148.8 million kilometres (93 million miles), or eight light-minutes, away from Earth.

So, who can count the stars?