Details. as.character and is.character are generic: you can write methods to handle specific classes of objects, see InternalMethods. Further, for as.character the default method calls as.vector, so dispatch is first on methods for as.character and then for methods for as.vector.
But this is the number of stars we can see from the entire Earth and we should remember that one hemisphere of Earth is always in daylight, so really only about 2500 to 5000 stars are visible at night from any given point on Earth.
At the Earth's North Pole, the north celestial pole is directly overhead, and all stars that are visible at all (that is, all stars in the northern celestial hemisphere) are circumpolar. As one travels south, the north celestial pole moves towards the northern horizon.