Astronomers estimate that there are at least 70 sextillion stars in the known universe. That is 230 billion times as many as the 300 billion in our own Milky Way (230 billion x 300 billion = approx 70 sextillion).
A typical galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, and there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Many stars are between 1 billion and 10 billion years old. Some stars may even be close to 13.7 billion years old — the observed age of the universe.
The nearest star to the Earth, apart from the Sun, is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light-years away. Travelling at the orbital speed of the Space Shuttle (5 miles per second), it would take about 150,000 years to get there.
Stars have been important to every culture. They have been used in religious practices and for celestial navigation and orientation. The Gregorian calendar, used nearly everywhere in the world, is a solar calendar based on the position of the Earth relative to the nearest star, the Sun.
Information source: Wikipedia
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