The Milky Way has been around for about 10 billion years or so, during which time about two trillion stars or so have formed. This means an average rate of 200 stars per year, but this is just an approximation. In some interstellar clouds such as the Great Nebula in Orion, about 500 stars have formed in the last 10 million years and there are apparently thousands of other star-forming clouds active today. So the actual current rate may be closer to about a dozen or so actual stars each year. The above Hubble Space Telescope image is of the region Hodge 301 in the Tarantula Nebula, and shows a young star cluster and remnant nebulosity left over from its primordial cloud.
Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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