There are 3-7 x 10²² stars in the universe, a relatively small number. Stars are organized into clusters, galaxies, galaxy clusters, superclusters, and the Great Wall. The Milky Way has 200-400 billion stars, and there are 80 billion galaxies in the observable universe. The universe is at least 93 billion light-years in diameter.
Scientists estimate that there are between 3 and 7 x 1022 stars in the universe, or between 30 and 70 billion trillion. This is actually a relatively small number by some standards. For example, the number of atoms in the Earth is approximately 1050 and the number of atoms in Mt. Everest is approximately 1040. The number of atoms in a pound of rock is approximately 1025. Avogadro’s number, which represents the number of atoms in 12 grams of carbon, is about 6 x 1023.
Stars in the universe are aggregated into many layers of organization, starting with star clusters, which merge into galaxies, which are members of galaxy clusters, which are themselves members of superclusters, which are themselves members of superclusters , all the way up to the greatest features in the universe, such as the Great Wall, a galactic supercluster about half a billion light-years long, one-third of a billion light-years wide, and 15 million light-years thick. At its highest level of organization, galactic clusters are distributed in “strands and voids,” thin filaments of galaxies separated by vast voids.
The typical organizational unit of the universe, the galaxy, contains between about 10 million and one trillion stars. Our Milky Way contains between 200 and 400 billion stars, depending on the exact number of faint low-mass stars, which is highly uncertain. There are about 80 billion galaxies in the observable universe, a number similar to the number of stars in a galaxy. These galaxies are scattered across a universe that is at least 93 billion light-years in diameter and possibly much larger. 93 billion light years is only the diameter of the universe that we can see – the visible universe – features of the universe beyond this are obscured by the cosmic microwave background radiation, a field created by the hot plasma that was ubiquitous in the first 300,000 years after the Big Bang.
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