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Contrary to popular
belief, the earth is not the center of the universe (ED NOTE:
Neither am I). These
awe-inspiring photos give us a different, mind-blowing and
humbling perspective of our entire existence, reminding us of our
utter insignificance in the greater scheme of things.
1. This is the
Earth, where we all live.
visibleearth.nasa.gov
2. This is our
“neighborhood,” the solar system.
Foxnews.com
3. This is the scaled
distance between the Earth and the moon. Were you expecting it to
be farther?
4. Every single planet in
our solar system would fit between Earth and moon with
4,990 miles to spare.
Reddit.com
5. If you still fail to see
as to how tiny we actually are, here’s North
America placed next to Jupiter.
astronomycentral.co.uk
6. Six Earths could line up
on Saturn’s ring.
astronomycentral.co.uk
7. And if Earth had rings
like Saturn, here’s what we would see every time we look at the
sky.
io9.com
8. Here’s a comet and the
city of Los Angeles placed side by side.
mentalfloss.com
9.
Now, take a look at the sun. The tiny dot down there, that’s us.
Twitter.com
10. And here’s how we
look like from the moon.
NASA
11. A view from Mars.
NASA
12. From Saturn.
NASA
13. And that’s us from
Neptune, 4 billion miles away.
NASA
14. The blue dot is the Earth.
That mega-huge yellow ball next to it, the sun. It blows
my mind.
astronomycentral.co.uk
15. The sun as seen from
Mars.
NASA
16. There are more stars in
space than there are grains of sand on all of Earth’s beaches.
science.nationalgeographic.com
17. Think the sun’s big? Think again. Here’s our sun compared to another sun, the
VY Canis Majoris
Wikipedia.org
18. If the sun was a blood
cell, the Milky Way would be as large as the United States. Yes,
that huge.
Reddit.com
19. Here’s where the
Earth’s at inside the Milky Way.
Teecraze.com
20. I know, mind-blowing.
Twitter.com
21. And Milky Way’s just
a tiny galaxy compared to Ic 1011. Take a look.
Twitter.com
22. This picture was taken
using the Hubble telescope. This single image alone contains
millions of galaxies, each composed of millions stars, and each
star with planets orbiting around them.
Hubblesite.org
23. This is the UDF 423
galaxy and it’s 10 billions light years away from us. Do you
know what that means? Its light took 10 billion years to reach the
earth, and just by looking at this galaxy you’re looking 10
billions years into the past.
Wikisky.org
24. When you look up the
sky, every single inch of your vision actually falls on a clump of
galaxies, stars and planets… billions of them.
Thetoc.gr
25. Now, take a look at
this black hole. A black hole is a region of space time with
gravity so powerful no particle entering it can ever pass through.
Not even light rays.
Mcdonaldobservatory.org
So whenever you feel
overwhelmed with the snowball of misfortunes the world throws at
you, just look at the night sky and remind yourself of man’s
place in the cosmos. Your big problems won’t seem so big
anymore. Again, here’s the Earth
where we live.
Photo:
Andrew Z. Colvin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
And this is where we are at
in our solar system.
Photo:
Andrew Z. Colvin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
This is how we look like in
our interstellar neighborhood.
Photo:
Andrew Z. Colvin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Here’s the galaxy where
our interstellar neighborhood is at.
Photo:
Andrew Z. Colvin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Zooming out, this is how it
looks like from afar.
Photo:
Andrew Z. Colvin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Zoom out a little more…
Photo:
Andrew Z. Colvin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Some more…
Photo:
Andrew Z. Colvin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
And ‘lo and behold, the
observable universe! Everything we’ve mentioned above is in that
tiny red dot
Photo:
Andrew Z. Colvin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
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