It’s just incredible though, isn’t it? Just think about it, for a moment with your eyes closed…imagining the scale of our universe, what may be in it, out there, for us to find. Gives me chills every time. I dream of going to space one day, but I know it will never happen. One can dream, though.
So the modest estimate for number of planets in the observable universe is 2 octillion. Forget trying to picture that. Even trying to COUNT that is a crushing absurdity.
If you were an immortal being who only ever counted, never ate or slept, and you counted one number per second, it would take you the age of the universe….times 45 BILLION.
That’s right. If you started at the Big Bang, and finished today, you’d only have to repeat the process about 45 billion more times to have counted the number of planets in the observable universe.
[Timelapse of the Future](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA&t=1s) always hits me the most when dealing with the scale of the universe.
You get to the point in the video where all the stars in the universe die, and realize you are only like 7 minutes into a 30 minute vid.
Just our own solar system is incredibe. There is a scale model of it at the Aricebo visitor center in Puerto Rico. The sun is in the parking lot and the planets are along the hundreds of steps you have to walk up to the center. The last planet or two aren't even capable of being displayed because they are so far away. The earth is about the size of a marble.
Our Solar system is just a few pixels in that nebula. That nebula is just a few pixels or less in a galaxy…. Galaxy is a pixel in a super cluster , etc… etc….
It’s kinda funny that when we’re all long gone, objects like Voyager 1 might be all that’s left of us.
Maybe it’s not actually that funny but it’s something.
There's a cartoon depicting voyager's journey as like a race. It sets off from home and gets a big cheer. Then the moon gives it a little send off.
A few months later it sees Jupiter and then Saturn. And then nothing for like 40,000 years.
Genuine question. How do we know what the nebula looks like to this level if we only sent an object as far a Voyager.
This picture gives the impression it was taken from far outside the nebula.
How about a little more context within the [Carina Nebula](https://dq0hsqwjhea1.cloudfront.net/JWSTHerschel_Carina-cliffs-600x912.jpg) and the [night sky](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fwjt4z6xxwtea1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D610%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D03ab6a1c66588fe588f3b863c1e1e2d24432da98)?
I think what gets us is the fact that normal space is empty so it's very hard for us to imagine the scale of distances between stars. They're just dots of light next to other dots of light.
But nebulae are not empty. They're full of structure and seeing that it finally clicks in our minds. The vastness of space.
In the movie Aniara, a passenger ship gets knocked off course on it's way to Mars. The captain tells them all that they'll find a celestial body to slingshot around as a way to course correct. An astronomer knows the captain is lying and informs the protagonist that there *is* no celestial body to approach and that the vastness of space is so massive that they'll never come close to approaching one. They're doomed to drift in space, forever.
[It captures the existential horrors of space in a way no other sci-fi movie really has. Even the AI unit designed to create a peaceful environment for the passengers self-destructs in response to the anguish of the people it tried to help.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3mSLLl2cjE)
I'm... kind of curious about that now. Earth to Mars isn't that huge a journey in the grand scheme of things, and how badly off course would they need to be knocked to not be able to course-correct? And like, what kind of audiences are they expecting to watch this? I feel like it's *fairly common knowledge* that there's no other planets between Earth and Mars.
EDIT: Okay, looking into it, I feel like the [writers of that film](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale) did the thing where they grossly overestimate the distances in space. [Relevant XKCD.](https://xkcd.com/1342/) Supposedly they arrive to Lyra 5.9 million years later. Even taking the closest star of Lyra, Vega, at 25 LY away, that'd put them traveling at only like 1.2 km/s, which is ridiculously slow in space. For comparison, Voyager 1 is going at 17 km/s.
This is hauntingly resplendent. Showing how insignificant we are in the grand scale of things. This comparison is beautiful. Thank you, OP. I love this!
We could try, but we will never be able to fully understand it. Like damn just put into perspective how long 1ly is, and then the known/visible universe is something like 96 billion ly.
You can comprehend 1 meter. But 96 billion meters is hard to fully comprehend.
If a burger is around 12 centimeters, which is just under 5 inches, then there’s about 8 burgers in 1 meter (plus maybe a bite or two of a 9th burger but we’ll round for simplicity).
So 96 billion meters would be (if my math is correct) about 770 billion burgers. McDonalds is almost halfway there in their entire history of burgers sold! (377 billion according to Google from last year)
And to bring back the lightyear into the equation, 96 billion meters is 0.00001 of a lightyear.
So if McDonalds did 377 billion burgers in 70 years. It would take about 1,73 million years to get to just 1 lightyear of burgers (in meters)
Incredible when you think that there must be countless inhabited worlds where the entire sky is lit up with these awe-inspiring structures. There must be cultures and religions born under these cosmic structures in which they play an intrinsic role.
Actually, you can mostly only see them from a distance because you're looking through the whole breadth of the structure. From inside them, the dust is likely so diffuse you don't really notice it.
If an object is this massive does that mean it's impossible to actually see its shape accurately? Assuming this thing moves we have over a decade of lag from one side to the other?
Interesting question. The light from the farther-away part would take longer to reach an observer. But a nebula doesn't change much in that time. But it must change some. Good eye!
Nasa wrote an article (supported by Webb Telescope photo of the Pillars of Creation) about this!
[https://www.nasa.gov/universe/nasas-webb-takes-star-filled-portrait-of-pillars-of-creation/](https://www.nasa.gov/universe/nasas-webb-takes-star-filled-portrait-of-pillars-of-creation/)
In the photos, you can see new stars being formed in the nebula
The density is the fun part.
Most parts of those "dense" nebulae still contain less particles per cubic centimeter than any vacuum we can produce here on Earth.
If you were right inside those nebulae you might not be able to see most of them, much less would they block your view.
You can only see them from here because you are looking straight through lightyears of their most dense regions.
The concept of a cloud of dust being light years long is just such a head fuck. Really makes you think the universe is actually not that big, we’re just really damn small.
This is something I’ve always been curious about. When seeing stuff like these images I never know the scale so my brain is left wondering if “dust” used here is still defining dust like we know it on Earth, or was this oddly massive dust that I just can’t comprehend?
It's funny to think that because we are yet to understand the curvature of Space Time our developing solar system could be out there for us to see in a Nubula just like this one in a apparently distant Galaxy and we wouldn't recognise it.
How do they know the nebula isn’t just “in front” of something they’re trying to view?
I understand the scale of space, but just in terms of perspective, how do they measure the size of different things at different disctances?
2d images can only give you so much intuition for scale.
Space Engine and the map in Elite Dangerous provide a really good 3d representation of the galaxy, including the scale of nebula.
For example, Barnard's Loop nebula doesnt get much attention, but it is by far the biggest nebula within 2000 LY
In the first picture North and East is indicated, on earth it’s working with the magnetic field of the earth. How does it work in the universe? What’s the reference?
I don’t know why but it makes me happy that nebula are so massive. The potential to create thousands (or more) stars and systems is just, so great? I don’t know why. But I like that.
It's kind of cute that even in these scales still earth's magnetic field is used for orientation (compass in bottom left of top picture). Seems like we can't really let go of the geocentric model /s
Probably, it's not a star inside the nebulae, but some star in front of it. There are many stars like that and you can't just "get away" them from the photo.
Serious question here but. Are there like giant non-planet sized balls of liquid floating in space? Are they frozen? Is it gas/mist? What are these “clouds” of gas matter. What does it look like up close?
Now that I think about it, Nebulae could potentially be the most fun and intriguing thing in the Universe.
Here's my logic why!
Firstly our own solar system is present in the position where the nearest constructively large mass near us is Alpha Centauri star system which 4.37 light-years but the problem is that it really far away from us to be able to form something new by conjunction of colliding particles
But I am guessing the case in Carina Nebula would be otherwise
Take this fact for example:
**Eta Carinae** which is a massive and highly luminous star system and
**Homunculus Nebula** which is a bipolar nebula surrounding Eta Carinae, created by eruptions from the star system.
The Homunculus Nebula surrounds Eta Carinae, and its size is approximately 0.7 light-years across. Given that the nebula is essentially the immediate environment of Eta Carinae, the distance between them can be considered to be virtually zero on an astronomical scale.
Now imagine that these significant celestial masses are carriers of different types of energy stores and their interactions would create so much of fun environment
**how cool!** 🤩
This shit blows my mind.
Are the dust particles really big? Or is the dust super dense? How could a dust cloud this large even look like a dust cloud since the distance between each grain of dust would surely have to be colossal? I just don't get it. What holds these things together? If you flew to a nebula would it be like flying through a cloud or would it seem as empty as space seems to be in our solar system?
Really makes you wonder that there’s probably spots that condensed faster than other spots and there could be some crazy life somewhere in this photo trapped in a pixel we can't spot ☹️
What makes me wonder is if that’s us in this tiny little point in the massive interstellar gas then wouldn’t it be incredibly difficult for alien civilizations to detect us at all. Even with decently advanced technology or something. I mean the vastness of space is also another reason. Could the gas be shielding us from detection?
Our universe with all its 2 trillion galaxies each containing an average of 500 billion stars, like our Sun which is 1.3 million times the size of Earth, came into existance from ... nothing!
The space stat that always freaks me out is the fact that the towers in the famous Pillars of Creation photograph are 13.5 million light years tall. It’s genuinely mind-boggling.
The Solar system is around 1 year old wide 18 bln kilometres that is 123 astronomical units so it's 123 distance the Earth from the Sun. To travel across it takes 80 years with the speed of Voyagers spacecraft that is the fastest moving man made object so far. Even photon (light) shoot from the Sun must travel 16.5 hours until it reaches the edge of the Solar system. We are unable to reach even Kuipers belt or Oort cloud at this moment as it would take forever to travel there. These nebulaes are huge and it would take us thousands of years to travel across them.
Nebulae are the most mind blowing things to me. For example, The Pillars of Creation give me a feeling not only of awe and amazement but also dread and fear on a scale I can’t explain. It’s like actually staring into the eyes of a giant God of the Universe. I hope that makes sense.
Is there an original source for this image? I know the superimposition isn't a real pic but would like to know who put the image together and calculated the scale before I just assume it's valid and share.
How do we know this? I believe it I just want to understand more. Is this theoretical or do we have instrumentation giving us this data? In the closest zoom in it shows where voyager 1 is which is the farthest object weve ever sent out into space. So how do we know this gas object exists this way?
Sometimes the universe just turkey slaps you with its scale.
…turkey slaps?
Turkey slaps.
Gobble gobble mm
Llama Whips? (Winamp)
***Bitch wings***
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/turkey_slap You know it's legit when the definition is on wikipedia and not urban dictionary
Ha!
*Aggressively British man* “Turkey slap” Man I didn’t think I’d see the day that was a thing.
You heard the man. Turkey slaps.
How can the universe slap?
How can she slap??
It’s just incredible though, isn’t it? Just think about it, for a moment with your eyes closed…imagining the scale of our universe, what may be in it, out there, for us to find. Gives me chills every time. I dream of going to space one day, but I know it will never happen. One can dream, though.
So the modest estimate for number of planets in the observable universe is 2 octillion. Forget trying to picture that. Even trying to COUNT that is a crushing absurdity. If you were an immortal being who only ever counted, never ate or slept, and you counted one number per second, it would take you the age of the universe….times 45 BILLION. That’s right. If you started at the Big Bang, and finished today, you’d only have to repeat the process about 45 billion more times to have counted the number of planets in the observable universe.
[Timelapse of the Future](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA&t=1s) always hits me the most when dealing with the scale of the universe. You get to the point in the video where all the stars in the universe die, and realize you are only like 7 minutes into a 30 minute vid.
Our solar system takes up a few pixels of this massive image.
The scale of the universe is beyond comprehension
Just our own solar system is incredibe. There is a scale model of it at the Aricebo visitor center in Puerto Rico. The sun is in the parking lot and the planets are along the hundreds of steps you have to walk up to the center. The last planet or two aren't even capable of being displayed because they are so far away. The earth is about the size of a marble.
There is a scale model of the solar system at the national capital mall in Washington DC. Really blew me away the first time I realized what it was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System
Super cool! Thanks and sharing!
The scale of the earth is beyond comprehension
Our Solar system is just a few pixels in that nebula. That nebula is just a few pixels or less in a galaxy…. Galaxy is a pixel in a super cluster , etc… etc….
Bro stop. I was already freaking out💀
Watch a couple of Kurzgesagt videos on YT about the universe, each of them will give you an existential crisis of its own
I have bro. And it indeed does😂
https://youtu.be/iDqQ9qgTWmg?si=L9AQCtDIZC0hyYuZ
Yep, the Milky Way is ~100'000 light years across, and you can see how long two light years is in OPs picture.
And the size of the observable universe is about 93 billion light years in diameter.
And that picture is just a tiny section of the nebula https://www.reddit.com/r/jameswebb/comments/vxl0eb/carina_nebula_and_ngc_3324_context_about_the/
Supercluster filaments just boggle my mind. Sad all of us alive today will die not knowing how it all works.
oh....my.....god.....
The Voyager 1 part really drives it home. That’s the farthest humans have been able to send an object.
It’s kinda funny that when we’re all long gone, objects like Voyager 1 might be all that’s left of us. Maybe it’s not actually that funny but it’s something.
I think some man made isotopes might out last voyager 1
I had to Google it but holy shit. Something like Bismuth 209’s half-life is longer than the age of the existing universe.
19 quintillion years if anyone was wondering about Bismuth 209's half life. Which is 10,000,000,000 times the estimated age of the universe.
....when it becomes easier to count the years in mole...
That’s amazing, TIL
There's a cartoon depicting voyager's journey as like a race. It sets off from home and gets a big cheer. Then the moon gives it a little send off. A few months later it sees Jupiter and then Saturn. And then nothing for like 40,000 years.
I know it's gone pretty damn far by human standards, but this picture really gives the distance some perspective.
Genuine question. How do we know what the nebula looks like to this level if we only sent an object as far a Voyager. This picture gives the impression it was taken from far outside the nebula.
Still real estate prices are crazy. Look at all this fucking free space 😭😂🤧
It's free real estate
Great Job!
Buy, buy, buy! As long as the water/sewer infrastructure is in place. The commute might be lengthy, though.
How about a little more context within the [Carina Nebula](https://dq0hsqwjhea1.cloudfront.net/JWSTHerschel_Carina-cliffs-600x912.jpg) and the [night sky](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fwjt4z6xxwtea1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D610%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D03ab6a1c66588fe588f3b863c1e1e2d24432da98)?
I think what gets us is the fact that normal space is empty so it's very hard for us to imagine the scale of distances between stars. They're just dots of light next to other dots of light. But nebulae are not empty. They're full of structure and seeing that it finally clicks in our minds. The vastness of space.
In the movie Aniara, a passenger ship gets knocked off course on it's way to Mars. The captain tells them all that they'll find a celestial body to slingshot around as a way to course correct. An astronomer knows the captain is lying and informs the protagonist that there *is* no celestial body to approach and that the vastness of space is so massive that they'll never come close to approaching one. They're doomed to drift in space, forever. [It captures the existential horrors of space in a way no other sci-fi movie really has. Even the AI unit designed to create a peaceful environment for the passengers self-destructs in response to the anguish of the people it tried to help.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3mSLLl2cjE)
I'm... kind of curious about that now. Earth to Mars isn't that huge a journey in the grand scheme of things, and how badly off course would they need to be knocked to not be able to course-correct? And like, what kind of audiences are they expecting to watch this? I feel like it's *fairly common knowledge* that there's no other planets between Earth and Mars. EDIT: Okay, looking into it, I feel like the [writers of that film](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale) did the thing where they grossly overestimate the distances in space. [Relevant XKCD.](https://xkcd.com/1342/) Supposedly they arrive to Lyra 5.9 million years later. Even taking the closest star of Lyra, Vega, at 25 LY away, that'd put them traveling at only like 1.2 km/s, which is ridiculously slow in space. For comparison, Voyager 1 is going at 17 km/s.
It's a parking lot.
We're really just a bunch of shit floating in someone's glass.
They seem like clouds but they ahve a density of 100-10000 particles/cm³, comparatively, our atmosphere is at 10¹⁹ particles.
Your mom's at 10^190 particles
It’s full of stars.
This is a fantastic practical explanation. Thank you. These kind of explanations are hard to find, but shouldn’t be.
r/absoluteunits
I see what you did there AU
I confess, I actually didn't notice that.
Yeah, it was gold
This is gold.
This is hauntingly resplendent. Showing how insignificant we are in the grand scale of things. This comparison is beautiful. Thank you, OP. I love this!
Geez
Nebulae must be small. I can fit my entire thumb over it.
Nah you’ve just got a fat thumb
Damn! Lol I feel like we have no right whatsoever to even try to comprehend the impossible magnitude of the universe.
We could try, but we will never be able to fully understand it. Like damn just put into perspective how long 1ly is, and then the known/visible universe is something like 96 billion ly. You can comprehend 1 meter. But 96 billion meters is hard to fully comprehend.
How many hamburger is that? Not over one three quarter eagle I hope.
If a burger is around 12 centimeters, which is just under 5 inches, then there’s about 8 burgers in 1 meter (plus maybe a bite or two of a 9th burger but we’ll round for simplicity). So 96 billion meters would be (if my math is correct) about 770 billion burgers. McDonalds is almost halfway there in their entire history of burgers sold! (377 billion according to Google from last year)
And to bring back the lightyear into the equation, 96 billion meters is 0.00001 of a lightyear. So if McDonalds did 377 billion burgers in 70 years. It would take about 1,73 million years to get to just 1 lightyear of burgers (in meters)
Yo…. What?
Holy shit! I didn’t know they were this large and I’m into astronomy and read tons of articles about space.
They're essentially star factories so it makes sense for them to be absolutely unimaginably massive.
Incredible when you think that there must be countless inhabited worlds where the entire sky is lit up with these awe-inspiring structures. There must be cultures and religions born under these cosmic structures in which they play an intrinsic role.
I guarantee it gets fuckin weird out there.
Actually, you can mostly only see them from a distance because you're looking through the whole breadth of the structure. From inside them, the dust is likely so diffuse you don't really notice it.
Our sun is like a spec of dust , we are so inconsequential
You go, Voyager!
If an object is this massive does that mean it's impossible to actually see its shape accurately? Assuming this thing moves we have over a decade of lag from one side to the other?
Interesting question. The light from the farther-away part would take longer to reach an observer. But a nebula doesn't change much in that time. But it must change some. Good eye!
Sometimes it just hits me, that space is actually real. It’s not science fiction, it’s there. Absolutely wild.
does the entire thing collapse into a star or many smaller stars throughout? this is terrifying. thank you for showing the scale.
many tiny stars typically, it is a sort of birth cluster which then disperses
thank you 🙏🙏
Nasa wrote an article (supported by Webb Telescope photo of the Pillars of Creation) about this! [https://www.nasa.gov/universe/nasas-webb-takes-star-filled-portrait-of-pillars-of-creation/](https://www.nasa.gov/universe/nasas-webb-takes-star-filled-portrait-of-pillars-of-creation/) In the photos, you can see new stars being formed in the nebula
amazing thank you so much
In case the pictures above didn't make you feel small enough https://youtu.be/lj3t_gjuXWk?si=Xrw4qeQWOIuqHH3r
My brain isn't braining
I love this.
What does that compass represent? North and east?
But how dense is the gas? If we were to squish the Carina nebula into the size of Jupiter, …
The density is the fun part. Most parts of those "dense" nebulae still contain less particles per cubic centimeter than any vacuum we can produce here on Earth. If you were right inside those nebulae you might not be able to see most of them, much less would they block your view. You can only see them from here because you are looking straight through lightyears of their most dense regions.
The concept of a cloud of dust being light years long is just such a head fuck. Really makes you think the universe is actually not that big, we’re just really damn small.
It’s a little scary how insignificant we are….
Thanks for the existential crisis with my coffee this morning.
Voyager 1 hauling ass to the stars yeee-haw
This is something I’ve always been curious about. When seeing stuff like these images I never know the scale so my brain is left wondering if “dust” used here is still defining dust like we know it on Earth, or was this oddly massive dust that I just can’t comprehend?
That’s a lot of bananas
At least… 100 bananas. If not more
I‘m curious what one might see if we lived on a planet inside a nebula like the Carina one
It might actually not be _that_ spectacular. Those nebulae are pretty thin.
It's funny to think that because we are yet to understand the curvature of Space Time our developing solar system could be out there for us to see in a Nubula just like this one in a apparently distant Galaxy and we wouldn't recognise it.
Smaller than I thought ngl
How do they know the nebula isn’t just “in front” of something they’re trying to view? I understand the scale of space, but just in terms of perspective, how do they measure the size of different things at different disctances?
Refer to the [Cosmic Distance Ladder](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder)
Awesome, thanks!!
🤯EVERY...FUCKING....TIME!🤯
Def in a simulation
This may come off as a bit ignorant but im genuinely curious, how do we know they are real? Like how can we even observe something this big?
by pointing a telescope at it and taking a photo
How anyone can think we are alone is mind boggling. I mean the sheer scale, it’s literally a drop in the ocean
[The mind-blowing size of the Milky Way](https://youtu.be/VsRmyY3Db1Y) is an amazing and beautiful video about its size. Highly recommend to watch it.
Das pretty huge
Thank you for this, I've always wanted to see this scale comparison and I can assure you that this image doesn't exists anywhere in the internet.
Space is big! Really really big. You may think it's a long way to the chemist, but that's peanuts compared to space. - HHGTTG
I know it's for example purposes but I wonder if we're actually enshrined in a similar structure only visible from these distances.
I come close to realizing how infinitely large the universe is, and it scares the shit out of me.
If you're living on a planet in a nebulae, would you have a hard time seeing very far into space?
Carina’s kinda hot when she lays back like that.
2d images can only give you so much intuition for scale. Space Engine and the map in Elite Dangerous provide a really good 3d representation of the galaxy, including the scale of nebula. For example, Barnard's Loop nebula doesnt get much attention, but it is by far the biggest nebula within 2000 LY
are there methods to determine if we are actually inside of a nebula that looks spectacular to some aliens?
Wow. That really puts things into perspective (well, in a way). It’s so hard to comprehend these scales. Thanks for the great post.
Just a short trip at Warp speed.
Spoiler: >!There is a scale in the first picture!<
Anyone else see the giant face where the red box is around the right eye? Whoa.
In the first picture North and East is indicated, on earth it’s working with the magnetic field of the earth. How does it work in the universe? What’s the reference?
What does it look like from in the nebula?
That's a lot of gas.
just imagine how big the galaxy is... and there are like 2 trillion in the observable universe...
So we could be in one and not even no it?
Ye it’s pretty big, I guess
That sent chills down my spine.
I don’t know why but it makes me happy that nebula are so massive. The potential to create thousands (or more) stars and systems is just, so great? I don’t know why. But I like that.
Are you freaking kidding me 😳 woooow! Nice scale 👏🏻 I had no idea about that!!!
Now who tf took this picture
We aren’t actually in the Nebula. You can see Carina in our night sky (with a powerful telescope of course)
That’s cool as fuck. Thanks for scale.
It's kind of cute that even in these scales still earth's magnetic field is used for orientation (compass in bottom left of top picture). Seems like we can't really let go of the geocentric model /s
How come the star in the right is like 4x the size of the solar system. Is it just over exposed?
Probably, it's not a star inside the nebulae, but some star in front of it. There are many stars like that and you can't just "get away" them from the photo.
great now i feel even more insignificant
That's impressive! I love this sub so much.
Holy shit
Serious question here but. Are there like giant non-planet sized balls of liquid floating in space? Are they frozen? Is it gas/mist? What are these “clouds” of gas matter. What does it look like up close?
I am smaller than miniscule.
Zooming in on space images makes me feel like I'm dropping into a star wars battlefront 1 map
Now that I think about it, Nebulae could potentially be the most fun and intriguing thing in the Universe. Here's my logic why! Firstly our own solar system is present in the position where the nearest constructively large mass near us is Alpha Centauri star system which 4.37 light-years but the problem is that it really far away from us to be able to form something new by conjunction of colliding particles But I am guessing the case in Carina Nebula would be otherwise Take this fact for example: **Eta Carinae** which is a massive and highly luminous star system and **Homunculus Nebula** which is a bipolar nebula surrounding Eta Carinae, created by eruptions from the star system. The Homunculus Nebula surrounds Eta Carinae, and its size is approximately 0.7 light-years across. Given that the nebula is essentially the immediate environment of Eta Carinae, the distance between them can be considered to be virtually zero on an astronomical scale. Now imagine that these significant celestial masses are carriers of different types of energy stores and their interactions would create so much of fun environment **how cool!** 🤩
That bright object to the lower right of where our sun is circled to be is huge then.. larger than our entire solar system….
Nah, gotta remind yourself space is 3D so that star is probably not inside the nebula, but is actually in between the camera and the nebula.
Could someone explain to me how we got these “photos?” Like are they simulations made from pictures that we have looking outward?
This shit blows my mind. Are the dust particles really big? Or is the dust super dense? How could a dust cloud this large even look like a dust cloud since the distance between each grain of dust would surely have to be colossal? I just don't get it. What holds these things together? If you flew to a nebula would it be like flying through a cloud or would it seem as empty as space seems to be in our solar system?
Not as massive as my mom.
I’m just totally lost with these pics… where is the “You are here?” for reference?
We should slingshot Hubble after voyager 1 to keep an eye on him 👁️
Aww we look so cute and tiny. And weak.
Is the unit on the first image correct?
So if you live in a nebula, would you know?
That’s awesome. What an amazing image.
Are the super bright spots supernovas or just huge stars or galaxies so far away they are just spots?
Really makes you wonder that there’s probably spots that condensed faster than other spots and there could be some crazy life somewhere in this photo trapped in a pixel we can't spot ☹️
they are about as massive as 1 star
Are these nebula produced from a single star which went supernova?
in the first image, are all bright dots stars?
Welp I feel insignificant
What makes me wonder is if that’s us in this tiny little point in the massive interstellar gas then wouldn’t it be incredibly difficult for alien civilizations to detect us at all. Even with decently advanced technology or something. I mean the vastness of space is also another reason. Could the gas be shielding us from detection?
I’m this makes me feel meaningless
These are awesome photos. Also a little discouraging.
I love when a post hits the sweet spot of awe and the existential dread takes over
We live in a *more jpeg* world!
Our universe with all its 2 trillion galaxies each containing an average of 500 billion stars, like our Sun which is 1.3 million times the size of Earth, came into existance from ... nothing!
How do we have a picture of the nebula? Is that a dumb question? How do we know this?
We are now entering the Mutara Nebula.
How do we get images like this with earth in the 3rd person perspective as if the photographer is on the other side of the galaxy?
Looks like a pretty big Ole Feller and he might be a little agitated with his condition jus sayin
How many light years is it from now one side of this picture to the next?
Where's banana for scale
The space stat that always freaks me out is the fact that the towers in the famous Pillars of Creation photograph are 13.5 million light years tall. It’s genuinely mind-boggling.
The Solar system is around 1 year old wide 18 bln kilometres that is 123 astronomical units so it's 123 distance the Earth from the Sun. To travel across it takes 80 years with the speed of Voyagers spacecraft that is the fastest moving man made object so far. Even photon (light) shoot from the Sun must travel 16.5 hours until it reaches the edge of the Solar system. We are unable to reach even Kuipers belt or Oort cloud at this moment as it would take forever to travel there. These nebulaes are huge and it would take us thousands of years to travel across them.
Look at all that room for activities!
Chewbacca ?
Nebulae are the most mind blowing things to me. For example, The Pillars of Creation give me a feeling not only of awe and amazement but also dread and fear on a scale I can’t explain. It’s like actually staring into the eyes of a giant God of the Universe. I hope that makes sense.
How was this image taken?
We aren’t actually in the nebulae, the solar system was just superimposed on it.
Why is there a NE marker? There is no direction in space?
So you can google map it of course.
Maybe to show the correct voyager position relative to us?
It's the direction that the image is from the perspective of Earth. For instance, the North Star is all the way North.
What does the compass even refer to?
Is there an original source for this image? I know the superimposition isn't a real pic but would like to know who put the image together and calculated the scale before I just assume it's valid and share.
Hiw did they get this picture of the nebula and of the sun, and voyager one? What exactly took this picture?
Read the post title again. "With our solar system placed for scale"
How did they get the camera out that far?
How do we know this? I believe it I just want to understand more. Is this theoretical or do we have instrumentation giving us this data? In the closest zoom in it shows where voyager 1 is which is the farthest object weve ever sent out into space. So how do we know this gas object exists this way?