They can be blue or white, yellow, orange, or red. I should be able to see about 3,000 of them on a clear, dark night. But astronomers tell us that there are more than 200,000,000,000,000,000,000 (200 billion billion) stars, more than 40 billion per person on our little planet-home. There was a day that scientists, ignoring the inference of Scripture that man cannot count them (Gen. 15:5)–though God has even named them (Ps. 147:4)–said there were a thousand stars or so. Or so! Every time astronomers build a larger telescope, they find we have a larger universe.
The figures concerning the heavens are, well, astronomical–not only the number of stars, but their temperatures, sizes, and distances from us. It is no wonder that David wondered, “What is man that Thou art mindful of him?” after considering the starry hosts.
Stars range in surface temperature from a chilly 5,000* F. (3,000* C) to a torrid 37,000* F. Our sun falls about into the middle of the category at approximately 10,000* F. But temperatures at the centers can approach 2,000,000* F. Interestingly, red stars are the coolest, blue stars the hottest.
And what of their sizes? Stars vary from extremely dense neutron stars to the supergiants. Antares, sixteenth brightest star to our view in the heavens (a mere 400 light-years away) has a diameter 330 times that of the sun–which is 109 times that of the earth. Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis) appears to expand and shrink, but varies between 375 and 595 times the diameter of the sun. That means that if this one star was centered in the middle of our solar system, the sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars could continue in their orbits inside Betelgeuse with 365,200,000 miles to spare.
Is your brain holding up? Not tired yet? Then think, if you can, of the distances between the stars: “Behold the height of the stars, how high they are!” (Job 22:12). As you know, the distances are measured in light-years, the distance traveled by light at 186,282 miles per second for one year–5.88 million million miles (9.46 million million km). Did David know that light was the limiting speed in the universe when he wrote: “If I take the wings of the morning (the first rays of light that shoot across the morning sky), and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea” the Lord would be there waiting to look after him (Ps. 139:9-10)?
The sun is just 93 million miles from us; the next nearest star, Proxima Centauri is 4.3 light-years from the sun. Some stars on the farside of our galaxy, the Milky Way, are 80,000 light-years from us.
Now let’s step away from our galactic cluster of 100 billion stars into real outer space. Our nearest galaxy-neighbor is 200,000 light-years away! The most distant stars we know about are billions of light-years from us. It’s a bit lonely out here, wouldn’t you say? Let’s return to that little blue planet, three from the sun.
Now go back in time with me nineteen centuries and across the globe to a ridge of hills just south of Jerusalem. Night has fallen. It has been almost two years since news that a King has been born nearby, born in an outbuilding normally reserved for livestock. We are startled to see a camel train upon which ride men who obviously are strangers to these parts. As we watch, they glance heavenward. A brilliant star shines above, seemingly the means by which they are directed to a modest building in the town of Bethlehem.
Wise men they are indeed, having left their homeland in search of the King, “for,” they say, “we have seen His star…” His star? They are all His! He made them, named them, and they glorify Him every one. Then what is He doing here? Why is the King of glory travelling incognito? I’ll let the psalmist tell you He was the One who linked the mighty stars and the inhabitants of this sad little planet in Psalm 147: “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds (margin, griefs). He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names” (vv. 3-4).