Again, at VLA that's not such a big problem. If only one out of a million of those has planets, and one out of a million of those have life, and just one out of a million of those has intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there. She meant to say that there are 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and a hundred billion galaxies like our own. That's not very many. There's a meteor shower, and they have a couple of small telescopes set up.
Meteors flash across the sky in a few seconds , while telescopes magnify a small part of the sky.
Watching a shower through a 'scope is like trying to find a coin you dropped on the ground with a microscope. The best way to watch meteors is lying in a lounge chair, so you can watch a large fraction of the sky comfortably. Also, it is established later in the movie that her father died on November 10. As always, I am willing to forgive this because really, I am not that picky, and it's not that big a deal. They set up a worldwide network of radio telescopes to watch Vega.