How many stars within 50 light years from earth?

In: Planetary Science [Edit categories]

According to SIMBAD, ~970. But there's a lot of stars within 50 light years whose distances aren't known. There's quite a few stars within 50 light years. To get a good estimate, we should consider how many stars within 20 light years, and go from there.

The nearest 25 light years are really well catalogued, and the current census is 200 stars. Now, through knowledge of Geometry, one can say that if you multiply the radius of a 3D shape by a number, x, the volume will increase by the x^3. Why 3? because it's a 3D shape.

So we double our sphere from 25 to 50 light years. So thus the volume increases by 2^3 = 8 times! So there are 8 times as many stars within 50 light years as there are within 25 light years.

200 * 8 =

1,600 stars (estimate).

First answer by ID3496335158. Last edit by ID3496335158. Question popularity: 1 [recommend question]

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