6Our Sun Is One Star Among Several Hundred Billion
There are a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way. Or is it 300 billion? Or 400 billion? That’s right—we don’t actually know how many stars are in our galaxy.
Many of them are dim, low-mass stars that are hard to detect over vast cosmic distances, and there are massive clouds obscuring the bulge of stars nearest to Sagittarius A*. Astronomers have estimated the total number of stars based on the Milky Way’s mass and brightness, but more precise numbers are still elusive.
Painting is an ancient medium and even with the introduction of photography, film and digital technology, it still has remained a persistent mode of expression. So many paintings have been limned over dozens of millennia that only a relatively small percentage of them could be construed as "timeless classics" that have become familiar to the public—and not coincidentally produced by some of the most famous artists of all time. We, of course, have our opinion of what makes the grade and we present them here in our list of the best paintings of all time.
