37 
Every time I look at the sky in a remote location, far away from cities’ light pollution, I marvel at the immensity of the Universe. But this video truly shows how much bigger the Universe is, how impossibly huge. Just watch and look at all those dots turn into galaxies until you reach your destination.
NASA:
This video zooms in on the active radio galaxy Hercules A. Spectacular jets powered by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy Hercules A illustrate the combined imaging power of two of astronomy’s cutting-edge tools, the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3, and the recently upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico.
Imagine you could do this in real time with your own eyes. No matter where you look, no matter how much you zoomed in, there will always seems to be more. My mind would probably explode. Or I would just spend my nights outside, looking and looking and looking, till the day I die. [NASA Goddard Flickr]
Visualising the Size of the Universe With a Grain of Sand
Truly Awesome Picture Perfectly Shows How Little Water There Is On Earth
If There Are 17 Billion Earth-Sized Worlds In Our Galaxy, the Universe Is Bubbling With Life
Its very hard to understand how large the universe it, once you finally realise how epic it is you will need to sit down for a while.
It only takes a glimpse at the sky to realise our insignificance.
To quote Carl Sagan regarding the furthest away photo taken of earth at the time…
“Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
“and now, it’s time for something completely different.” I’m sorry, but, how often have you dragged out that pompous quote. As much as I respect Dr. Sagan, what has that monologue got to do with Mr. Diaz’s observations about looking out, not looking in? Please, Think.
Thia should be emailed this to every Israeli and Palestinian, Indian & Pakistani, North Korean & South Korean and so on.
In the immortal words of Anton Ego: “you know what I’m craving? A little perspective. That’s it. I’d like some fresh, clear, well seasoned perspective”
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
“Life; loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.”
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless
The site regmedia.co.uk hubble-xdf.jpg(12… also has some simply stellar images that will expand your horizons. 13.5 Billion light years is a long, long, long, distance, and a very long time ago. Just a brief aside to Spazturtle, the Universe isn’t just large, it’s infinite, and that is an impossible concept. I think I’ll sit now.
Who needs a video when you can explore interactively – this programming in the link is overwhelming!
http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/stars/
Needs a webGL compatible browser or something. Just use Chrome…