On average, how many stars are formed each year in the Milky Way?
Doug Kaupa
Council Bluffs, Iowa
There are many ways to estimate the star-formation rate of the Milky Way, ranging from counting young stars directly to measuring the brightness of gas and dust that are indirectly heated by radiation from these stars. Although each of these methods involves somewhat uncertain assumptions, encouragingly they all converge on similar values of about 1 to 2 solar masses of stars forming per yea