Research released in 2016 revised the number of galaxies in the observable universe from a previous estimate of 200 billion to a suggested two trillion or more and, overall, as many as an estimated stars (more stars than all the grains of sand on planet Earth). Most of the galaxies are 1,000 to 100,000 parsecs in diameter (approximately 3000 to 300,000 light years) and separated by distances on the order of millions of parsecs (or megaparsecs). For comparison, the Milky Way has a diameter of at least 30,000 parsecs (100,000 ly) and is separated from the Andromeda Galaxy, its nearest large neighbor, by 780,000 parsecs (2.5 million ly.)