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"By measuring the number and luminosity of observable galaxies in the known universe, astronomers put current estimates of the total stellar population at roughly seventy billion trillion."
- Maria Temming, How Many Stars Are There in the Universe?

Eustace: "In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
Ramandu: "Even in your world, son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of."
- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, chapter XIV

"The proposition is that Sun is a living, conscious being with an intelligence that dwarfs our own. I am not only suggesting that Sun is a large complex system with some form of self-governing intelligence to it, but also that it is a living being, aware of itself and its place in the universe; that it is fully conscious and communicates with other conscious beings at its own level, and other levels; that its consciousness is so far beyond what we enjoy that it could be accorded deity status of a high order, and be recognized as a conscious being by atheists and agnostics, whatever spin they put on it.
As staggering as this proposition might seem, it is hardly novel, and was once held as a near universal belief or understanding in most parts of the globe. It is possible that generations of Neolithic peoples, the ancient Sumerians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Maya, Inca, Aztec, and the ancient Celts and Native Americans were not completely deluded. Perhaps they were right to regard Sun as a living celestial being, rather than view the prime enabler of life-on-Earth as just another random event in the infinity of space, deserving neither credit nor appreciation. We can add the world's 750 million Hindus to the list above, as well as followers of Shinto, the native Japanese religion revering Sun goddess Amaterasu."
- Gregory Sams, Sun of gOd