Please Do Try This At Home!

[bornagainathiest]

http://www.nasa.gov/...cience/xdf.html

 

Take a penny and position it so that it stands upright and you can see one face of it.

Now back away from it and keep going until you're 75 feet away from the coin.

 

(Hmmm... you might like to do this in your garden or somewhere else, outdoors. A 75 foot long room is a big ask.)

 

Anyway, can you still see the penny? Just about?

 

Well, here's a thought for you to consider.

 

The Hubble XDF image contains 5,500 galaxies and covers an area of the sky that's equivalent to a penny, seen from 75 feet away.

You'd need tens of thousands of XDF images to cover the whole sky.

 

Take a deep breath and t-h-i-n-k about it!

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

 

 

p.s.

Click on the 13 MB tif link... if you dare!

[Ouroboros]

It's amazing. It always blows my mind... the incredible size of it all.

[Ravenstar]

The vastness and wonder of the universe is the one thing that DESERVES awe.

 

I'm reading a book at the moment about black holes... and it goes into explaining star formation, galaxies, quasars, gravity and spacetime curvature, it describes some of the hypotheses around the three different kind of black holes, the vastness of the universe, etc..

 

That we, insignificant little creatures on an tiny planet, orbiting around an unremarkable star, in an unremarkable galaxy can even discover and contemplate it... THAT is amazing.

[asanerman]

When I consider the short extent of my life, swallowed up in the eternity

before and after, the small space that I fill or even see,

engulfed in the infinity immensity of spaces unknown to me and which

know me not, I am terrified and astounded to find myself here and

not there. For there is no reason why it should be here, not there,

why now rather than at another time.

 

~Blaise Pascal