<p>The largest catalogues, such as Hubble's Guide Star Catalog or the US Navy USNO-B1.0 catalogue have entries for about 1 billion object (mostly stars) with magnitudes down to 21.</p>

<p>The galaxy itself has about <a href="http://www.space.com/25959-how-many-stars-are-in-the-milky-way.html" rel="nofollow">100 billion stars</a>, but there is considerable uncertainty about that value. The true value could be less or a lot more. Between 50 and 500 billion is the range of uncertainty</p>

<p>So we have catalogued between 0.2% and 2% of the galaxy's stars with best estimate of <strong>about 1%</strong> of stars have been catalogued.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-08-28T17:51:17.527Z
It is very gratifying to know that Roddenberry took the time to get this one right :)
Ernest Friedman-Hill
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-08-28T14:13:04.437Z
2016-08-28T14:13:04.437Z
James K
<p>I was reading Gene Roddenberry's <a href="http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Star_Trek/2_The_Next_Generation/Star_Trek_-_The_Next_Generation_Bible.pdf" rel="nofollow">guide for TNG writers</a> and he mentions that that the time of ST:TOS, only 4% of the stars in our galaxy have been charted; this goes up to 19% by the time of TNG. This got me to wondering: what percentage of stars in the Milky Way galaxy have actually been catalogued?</p>

<star><observational-astronomy>
Percentage of charted stars
Ernest Friedman-Hill
# Percentage of charted stars

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-08-28)

I was reading Gene Roddenberry's [guide for TNG writers](http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Star_Trek/2_The_Next_Generation/Star_Trek_-_The_Next_Generation_Bible.pdf) and he mentions that that the time of ST:TOS, only 4% of the stars in our galaxy have been charted; this goes up to 19% by the time of TNG. This got me to wondering: what percentage of stars in the Milky Way galaxy have actually been catalogued?

**Tags:** star, observational-astronomy


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2016-08-28. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

The largest catalogues, such as Hubble's Guide Star Catalog or the US Navy USNO-B1.0 catalogue have entries for about 1 billion object (mostly stars) with magnitudes down to 21.

The galaxy itself has about [100 billion stars](http://www.space.com/25959-how-many-stars-are-in-the-milky-way.html), but there is considerable uncertainty about that value. The true value could be less or a lot more. Between 50 and 500 billion is the range of uncertainty

So we have catalogued between 0.2% and 2% of the galaxy's stars with best estimate of **about 1%** of stars have been catalogued.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: It is very gratifying to know that Roddenberry took the time to get this one right :)  

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