The night sky covered with the tiny shining points of stars — a fascinating show. Even at the strongest visual acuity a human eye is capable to notice is insignificant their small part. If the observer is on the lit streets of the large city, the number of visible stars is reduced to several dozen.
The optical devices reducing distance to stars — field-glasses, amateur and powerful professional telescopes — open infinite series of celestial bodies. To an unaided look far from fires of big cities about two thousand stars open. It is the third part of the total seen in two hemispheres of the planet. Out of the review there are stars of an opposite hemisphere and those that are located at the horizon — where the transparency of the atmosphere decreases.
The stars which received names
At the brightest and large stars is on several names: each people of the Earth gave them the names. Our times were reached by names about 300 of them — with Sumer, Akkad, Coptic, Semitic, Greek, Roman and, of course, the Arab roots. However on star charts of a star are designated by letters of the Greek alphabet with belonging to the constellation. The star brightness, the farther from the beginning of the alphabet the letter designating it is less.
The star the Deneb ("tail" in Arab), Cygnus constellation "alphas", has several "namesakes" — from Keith (Deneb Kaytos), Lev (Denebol's) constellations, the Scorpion (the Deneb Akrab), Delfina and Oryol.
About two dozen are called by the names of the astronomers who opened or described them. These are the flying Barnard's star in the Ophiuchus constellation and Kapteyn's star in the constellation of the Painter, invisible with the naked eye and opened with use of powerful optical devices. The garnet star of Gershel in Tsefey's constellation is available to observations in the Northern hemisphere. Surnames of astronomers Wang Maangena, Ksheminsky, Pshibylsky, the Popper, Lyoyten, Tigarden also accompany mentions of the stars described by them. However this list — is unofficial. To remember not easy in how many pioneers from other fields of science the same modesty is inherent. Smart founders of the companies suggesting to call some star in honor of the person interested to pay for it money successfully make money from air. There will be no datum left on the name in official star atlases, and about existence of the certificate on assignment to a star of a new name will know only two parties — paid and accepted a payment.
Anonymous stars
After about 6 thousand stars seen with the naked eye the objects distinguishable in the field-glass follow. At such increase the number of stars grows to 200 thousand. According to the system of star sizes developed by the Ancient Greek astronomer Gipparkh Nicaean and improved today it is stars 9-10 sizes. Stars 11-12 sizes are visible through an eyepiece of the modest amateur telescope, and the quantity them increases up to 2 million. The powerful telescope allows to distinguish objects till 15-16 of size, increasing their number more than by 100 million. It is considered that the quantity of stars up to the 20th size is estimated in tens of billions. However not everyone they is in constant visual availability (via telescopes, of course), being periodically closed by clouds of cosmic dust. How many stars are on bigger removal, it is possible to find out only approximately.
In the Atacama Desert (Chile) the most powerful telescope of Earth, a complex from 4 main and 4 auxiliary optical telescopes functions. It and is called — Very big (Very Large Telescope), or VLT.
According to the estimates of astronomers in the galaxy the Milky Way — that where our Earth is located — about one trillion stars (by other calculations — about 200 billion). However and there is a lot of galaxies in space — about one trillion, and this only in so-called visible area of the Universe.