We are 'nuclear waste' from the fuel that makes stars shine; indeed, each of us contains atoms whose provenance can be traced back to thousands of different stars spread through our Milky Way.

Me? Beautiful? I'm plain as cardboard.

That may be how you see yourself, but the rest of the world would be hard to agree. You shine brighter than the Milky Way.
Now there are those who might try to take that from you, but you don't have to give it away. Keep on shining Pattyn.
And when the right young man comes along, he'll love you all the more for giftin' this sad planet with your light.

Continuous as the stars that shine/ And twinkle on the milky way.

Indeed, the night sky is the part of our environment that's been common to all cultures throughout human history. All have gazed up at the 'vault of heaven' and interpreted it in their own way.

There are at least as many galaxies in our observable universe as there are stars in our galaxy.

Darwin and his successors taught us how our biosphere evolved, and thereby transformed our conception of humanity's place in nature. In the twenty-first century, space scientists are setting Darwin in a grander cosmic context - probing the origins of Earth, stars, atoms and the universe itself.