Download How big is the Universe?

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
caused by 50 m diam asteroid travelling 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 1.4 million km or 109 Earth diameters,
distance 150 million km or 1 astronomical unit (AU)
Mars - the Red Planet
(0.53 Earth diam)
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 and its four
largest moons
Io
Europa
Ganymede
Callisto
Saturn and its beautiful rings
9.4 Earth diam
distance 9.6 AU
Uranus, the tilted planet
4.0 Earth diam
distance 19.2 AU
Neptune
3.9 Earth diam
distance 30.1 AU
Pluto and Charon - a double planet
0.18 and 0.09 Earth diam
1.54 Earth diam apart
distance from Sun varies between 29.7 and 49.4 AU
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
Sun
160 million light years
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
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
Sun
160 million light years
The Milky Way as seen from Australia
(Notice the pink nebulae where new stars are forming)
Orion Nebula
(a small star forming region about 1 light year across)
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
Betelgeuse - a Red Supergiant star
(big enough to reach the orbit of Jupiter)
Helix Planetary Nebula (1.5 light years across)
Planetary nebula
(remains of
outer layers of star)
White dwarf star
(remains of core
of star and about
size of the Earth)
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)
A Black Hole
(a black hole 10 times the Sun's mass
would have a "radius" of only 30 km)
The End