Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

WOW!

the star Antares makes our Sun look like a tiny spec of dust.

thank you Steve

Best Wishes
Byron

I love those pictures Steve! Those are so awesome to try to comprehend.

I used to walk farther than that to school! and it was uphill in both directions!!! LOL

Thanks, Steve!, i think...

Martin

What seems to be evident, is that the earth, and even the sun could vanish completely, and it would have no effect on anything. The rest of the galaxy, and universe would carry on for trillions of years until it eventually goes dark, is comsumed by black holes, and evaporates.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/history-universe.html

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

Visuals, like the pictures you posted Steve, are about the only way my pea brain can hope to comprehend the size of space and some of the objects in it.

A trick I learned before the internet is to reduce everything to familiar (and comprehensible) units of measure. If space were scaled down so that 1/8th inch equaled one million miles, then the 96 1/8th inch marks on a 12" ruler could represent the ~93 million miles between Sun and Earth (1 AU) with only a small amount of error. Close enough.

At that scale, Pluto would be ~40 ft (~40 AU's) from the Sun. On average, very roughly.

The Sun's nearest companion, Proxima Centauri, would be over 51 Miles away! The real distance to the star is calculated (on-line) at 271,000 AU (4.22 ly).

And so far, we humans have ventured out into space about 1/32" during our lunar excursions.

Mind-boggling!

Martin
/edited/

ps more scales and other info here, often with the scale size of relevant objects.

One of my favorite comparisons is that if you take the sun, and the entire solar system, including Pluto and the Kyper belt, and shrink it to the size of a dime, the nearest star, (binary star Alpha Centari) is 5 miles away. (4.37 light years) The distances become mind boggling when you consider the size of a galaxy, and then the billions on billions of galaxies in the visible universe. If it takes 100,000 years traveling at 186,000 miles every second, just to cross our own milky way galaxy, the distances between the galaxies is just huge. Since the universe has been here 13.7 billion years, and the earth, about 4 billion years, although non-inhabitable for most of it, and the universe will be here trillions of years after the earth is swallowed up by the sun becoming a red giant, in makes one think....

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

checkout the dust cloud around Betelgeuse
Betelgeuse is the small red circle in the center

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope