ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Star count

Okay kiddo, do you know what stars are? They're these big balls of fire that shine really bright in the sky at night. Now, imagine that you wanted to count all the stars that you could see in the sky. That's what star counting is all about!

But wait, how do you count something that's so far away and hard to see? Well, people have different ways of doing it. Some people use special telescopes to see faraway stars, while others just look up at the sky and count the stars they can see with their naked eye.

Scientists might do this too, but they use fancy equipment to count even more stars than we can see. They can study the light that comes from stars and use that to figure out how many stars are in a certain part of the sky.

There are actually billions and billions of stars in the sky, so counting every single one would be pretty tough! But scientists like to count stars so they can learn more about the universe and how it works.

So star counting is like a big game of "I Spy" with the stars in the sky. It helps us learn more about the world around us, and it's pretty cool when you think about it!