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Comment by sndean | Hacker News Reader

Sorry if this is a dumb question (the article pretty much says it): when you zoom all of the way in, each dot is a star (or cluster of stars)?

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Not really, but close. Picture is 1.5 billion pixels and features 100 million stars. So it’s about one star per fifteen pixels.

100 billion stars, not million. So on the order of 100 stars per pixel, although obviously not evenly distributed.

(Edited to add) The individual stars you can see when you zoom all the way in are the very brightest stars, mostly blue (O/B class) or red (K/M class) giants. For each star you can see, there are hundreds of smaller stars that you can't make out individually but contribute to the general background glow.

> 100 billion stars, not million

No, it's 100 million, as the article says.

> It is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disc stretching across over 40 000 light-years.

I think maybe the op meant the entire Andromeda galaxy is estimated to have 200-400 billion stars (source Wikipedia)

Actually, Wikipedia says the number of stars is estimated at 10^12 (a trillion).

(And whoever guesses the closest gets the whole jar!)

> For each star you can see, there are hundreds of smaller stars that you can't make out individually but contribute to the general background glow.

Yeah, like ours.

Yes, or close! Zoom in right near the top right edge, should help clear that up for you :)

How does that really clear anything up? (Not being snarky, just wondering what you mean)? That the space between stars/clusters become a little more apparent?

http://imgur.com/XSgigtY

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