Well, they look like this astonishing image, captured by the Dark Energy Camera on the CTIO 4-meter telescope as part of a survey of the Milky Way's center bulge.

What some more wows? The Milky Way galaxy contains around 400 billion stars in total - or 40,000x the number shown in this image. And the Milky Way's an average, ordinary galaxy, maybe a little on the small side. We believe there are around 2 TRILLION galaxies in the universe. Our brains aren't built to properly comprehend the scale at play - but it fills us with wonder to *try*.

How much of our night sky is pictured here? Well, if you go outside and hold your thumb up, you've about covered it.

The full-sized image pictured here clocks in at a whopping 3GB, so I doubt anyone will be downloading that. But there's a handy online, zoomable version here: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2027a/zoomable/

Read more about the science, the numbers and see more awesome images in the article by the always excellent Phil Platt: https://www.syfy.com/.../what-do-10-million-stars-look-like

Originally posted on Facebook.