I remember the Douglas Adams comment in HHGTTG : If it’s one thing you can’t afford to have, it is a sense of perspective. Thus proved Trin Tragula to his wife, I think by creating the Total Perspective Vortex. Sort of similar one in this interactive graphic here. Which I then researched a bit more on the larger end of the spectrum, to find the following :
The Milky Way is approximately 100K light years in size and contains 200-400 Billion stars.
The Andromeda Galaxy contains more than 1 trillion stars.
Together, these are part of some 54 odd galaxies, that form the Local Group, which is approx 10 Million Light years in size.
The Local Group is part of over 100 such galaxy groups and clusters, that form the Virgo Supercluster, which is 110Mn Light years in size.
The Virgo Supercluster is one of the millions of superclusters in the observable universe.
Put pictorially, the Virgo Supercluster appears as an almost invisible speck in a map of the universe that is the size of roughly an A4 sheet.
An astonishing alternate map to put sizes in perspective is here.
Image courtesy : policymic.com
#Science / Astronomy
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