How BIG is the Universe? A Photographic Tour
Apollo 17 Lunar Rover (scale: a few metres)
Space Shuttle, Columbia (scale: 100 metres)
Barringer Crater, Arizona (1.2 km diam, 200 m deep - 50 m diam asteroid at 11 km/s)
Earth (diam 12,756 km)
Cloud covered Venus (0.95 Earth diameters)
Mercury (0.38 Earth diameters)
The Moon (0.27 Earth diameters)
The Sun (diam km or 109 Earth diameters, distance km or 1 astronomical unit - 1 AU)
Eclipse of the Sun by the Moon as seen from Antarctica (both subtend almost exactly the same angle of half a degree at the Earth)
Mars - the Red Planet (0.53 Earth diam)
Surface of Mars
Phobos and Deimos (max lengths 28 and 16 km)
Orbits of the planets to scale
Asteroid Gaspra (20 km long)
Jupiter and its Great Red Spot (11.2 Earth diam, distance 5.2 AU)
Jupiter’s cloud belts as seen by the Cassini spacecraft
Jupiter with (top to bottom) Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto
Io and its sulphur volcanoes (0.28 Earth diam, 1.04 Moon diam)
Ganymede, largest moon in the Solar System (0.41 Earth diam, 1.51 Moon diam)
Not all Jupiter’s moons are large: Thebe (100 km), Amalthea (270 km max) and Metis (40 km)
Saturn and its beautiful rings (9.4 Earth diam at 9.6 AU)
Orbits of the planets to scale
Uranus, the tilted planet (4.0 Earth diam at 19.2 AU)
Neptune (3.9 Earth diam at 30.1 AU)
Pluto and Charon - double planet (0.18 and 0.09 Earth diam 1.54 Earth diam apart at 29.7 to 49.4 AU from Sun)
Comet Hale-Bopp in March 1997 A comet tail can be over 1 AU long, but its nucleus measures only a few km across
Comet Halley and the Milky Way
Southern Pinwheel Galaxy 15 million light years away and similar to the Milky Way
How the Milky Way might look seen edge-on 160 million light years Sun
Size of the Milky Way Galaxy
Sombrero Galaxy
Whirlpool Galaxy
Andromeda Galaxy (2.5 million light years away - most distant naked eye object)
Giant Elliptical Galaxy M87 in Virgo Cluster 50 million light years away
Virgo Cluster of Galaxies 1500 galaxies 9 million light years across 50 million light years away
Coma Cluster
Hubble Deep Field showing galaxies over 10 billion light years away (looking back in time to near the beginning of the universe)
How the Milky Way might look seen edge-on 160 million light years Sun
The Milky Way as seen from Australia (Notice the pink nebulae where new stars are forming)
Milky Way with Faulkes Telescope in Australia in foreground
The constellation of Orion and the Milky Way (The bright stars we see here are no more than a few hundred light years away) Betelgeuse Rigel Orion Nebula
Orion Nebula a small star forming region about 1 light year across
New solar systems forming in Orion
New stars forming in pillars of molecular hydrogen and dust that are light years in length (in Eagle Nebula)
Pleiades and Hyades star clusters (with Jupiter and Saturn)
Betelgeuse - a Red Supergiant star (big enough to reach the orbit of Jupiter)
Life Cycles of Stars in Outline
Helix Planetary Nebula (1.5 light years across) White dwarf star (remains of core of star and about size of the Earth) Planetary nebula (remains of outer layers of star)
Cat’s Eye Planetary Nebula and white dwarf (A solar mass white dwarf would be only as big as the Earth)
Cocoon Planetary Nebula
Ring Planetary Nebula
Abell Planetary Nebula
Crab Nebula a supernova remnant - remains of a star that exploded 10 light years across neutron star about 10 km across is at centre (not visible)
Vela or Gum Nebula
A Black Hole (“Radius” of a 10 solar mass black hole would be only 30 km)
A black hole a few million times the mass of the Sun lurks at the centre of our galaxy and causes nearby stars to orbit very rapidly
How Orion would look if you were near a black hole (computer simulation)
Gravitational lensing by a galaxy cluster 2 billion light years away bends light from a galaxy so far away that its light has been travelling for 95% of the age of the Universe
The End