re: no. of stars in M87

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1 total messages Started by I. Neill Reid Sat, 05 Sep 1992 17:15

Author: I. Neill Reid
Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1992 17:15

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>From: Rune.Johansen@nta.no (Rune Henning Johansen FBA)

>In an article translated from English to Norwegian it was mentioned
>that Hubble took some pictures of the galaxy M87. According to the
>article this galaxy consists of two "billoner" stars. Since a
>Norwegian "billion" is thousand times greater than an English
>"billion" I wonder if there might be a translation error. So my
>question is simply: How many stars is there in M87?

> - Rune

 10**9 is an American billion - I certainly always thought of a
billion as a million million until I started working in astronomy.
But about 10**12 sounds right since big ellipticals can have masses of
more than 10**12 solar masses, and since your average star (that's 
averaging everything) is about 0.5 M(sun) there's the billion.

 Neill Reid - inr@accles.caltech.edu

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