“stars on heaven” vs “stars in heaven” [closed]

Question

Which expression is correct?

stars in heaven

or

stars on heaven

I want to express that something comes in really, really large numbers. For instance: "There are more Blabla than stars on/in heaven".

Answer 1

In dialogue, “stars on heaven” might be used to imply the speaker is non-native. “Stars in Heaven” (or the “stars in the heavens” mentioned in a later answer) is a rather more natural form than “stars on heaven”, but “stars in the sky” is probably heard much more commonly than either.

Answer 2

This Ngram makes it very clear that 'stars on heaven' isn't used - it gets no hits at all.

This is because the concept of heaven is a space that surrounds the stars, so they are in heaven in the same way that an aircraft is in the air, rather than the tangible item that would be required for them to be on, as when an aircraft is on the solid ground.

Answer 3

"In" is the only preposition that works in idiomatic English in this case. Sometimes it's possible to choose between two or three prepositions, but the stars are metaphorically in Heaven and the people are here on Earth.

Answer 4

As a minor exception, if using 'heaven' to refer to the sphere of fixed stars in the Ptolemaic Model (or other similar cosmologies), on would be the correct word choice. This is because in this context heaven is referring to an actual surface. If you're doing that the context needs to be made explicit to avoid confusion. Otherwise I agree with the other answers that 'in' is the correct choice.

Answer 5

Use stars in the heavens where the heavens means the sky.