On a clear night, in a dark place, out in the desert, we can see the brilliant night sky. We estimate that we can see about 6,000 stars in the night sky with the naked eye. The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is about four light years away. This means its light took four years to get here. Whatever we see now happened four years ago.

There are about 100 billion stars in the average galaxy. It is estimated that there are about 200 billion stars and 50 billion planets in our own Milky Way galaxy.

How much is 200 billion? The average life expectancy of Americans is 78.2 years. That means there are about 2.5 billion seconds in a life. If you spent your entire life counting to 200 billion, you’d have to count to 80 every second of your life.

The next significant galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is about 2 million light years away from us.

There are about 100 billion galaxies in the universe.

I won’t try to count them.