Post by Dragon Man on Jul 27, 2023 5:41:43 GMT
When being asked so often by visitors to our Club's Observatory "how big is space?" and "how far is that star?" I usually tell them that if the Sun was the size of a basketball, the nearest star 'Proxima Centauri' is about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) away".
I used wild guessing
Well, I decided to actually check in case I was exaggerating a bit
Boy O Boy did I get a shock when I did some real research and found the actual distances in space. It's Mind-Bogglingly HUGE!!!
To make the scale easy for anyone to use, the Astrophysicist used a Pea for scale because when a 7 millimeter (approx 1/4 inch) Pea is held at arms length it is around the same size as our Sun.
At this scale, the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is a staggering 202 kilometers!!!! (125.5 miles)
Alpha Centauri, the closest bright star is 211 kilometers (131 miles).
If that isn't amazing enough . . .
At this same scale, the Sombrero Galaxy, which we can see quite easily in our scopes, is 1,418,101,671 kilometers!!!
YEP!!! That's ONE BILLION four hundred and eighteen million kilometers. With our Sun the size of a Pea!!!
That's further than from us to Saturn!!!
The other question that often comes up from our visitors is "Do many of the stars crash into each other when Galaxies hit each other?"
I can now use this scale guide to explain to them that no evidence has ever been found to show that any stars have ever hit each other in colliding Galaxies.
I say to then "hold a pea here in your hand, get a friend to hold another pea at 202 kilometers away, and place another pea another 202 kilometers away in any direction, etc. Place as many as you want, all at these distances from each other. Even put in some basketballs for the bigger stars. Now, throw another pea and see if you can hit one of the others. Now throw hundreds or thousand or millions of peas, all at 202 kilometers apart, and see if any hit.
All this and we are talking about a Galaxy. Still at the scale of our Pea, the space between Galaxies is into the Trillions of Kilometeres, and there are Billions of Billions of Galaxies.
Now change the scale from a Pea to real size!
Space is shockingly HUGE!
Addendum: At this scale (7mm Pea size Sun) and with these incredible distances, Earth is far smaller than a single pixel on the screen you are reading this on
I used wild guessing
Well, I decided to actually check in case I was exaggerating a bit
Boy O Boy did I get a shock when I did some real research and found the actual distances in space. It's Mind-Bogglingly HUGE!!!
To make the scale easy for anyone to use, the Astrophysicist used a Pea for scale because when a 7 millimeter (approx 1/4 inch) Pea is held at arms length it is around the same size as our Sun.
At this scale, the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is a staggering 202 kilometers!!!! (125.5 miles)
Alpha Centauri, the closest bright star is 211 kilometers (131 miles).
If that isn't amazing enough . . .
At this same scale, the Sombrero Galaxy, which we can see quite easily in our scopes, is 1,418,101,671 kilometers!!!
YEP!!! That's ONE BILLION four hundred and eighteen million kilometers. With our Sun the size of a Pea!!!
That's further than from us to Saturn!!!
The other question that often comes up from our visitors is "Do many of the stars crash into each other when Galaxies hit each other?"
I can now use this scale guide to explain to them that no evidence has ever been found to show that any stars have ever hit each other in colliding Galaxies.
I say to then "hold a pea here in your hand, get a friend to hold another pea at 202 kilometers away, and place another pea another 202 kilometers away in any direction, etc. Place as many as you want, all at these distances from each other. Even put in some basketballs for the bigger stars. Now, throw another pea and see if you can hit one of the others. Now throw hundreds or thousand or millions of peas, all at 202 kilometers apart, and see if any hit.
All this and we are talking about a Galaxy. Still at the scale of our Pea, the space between Galaxies is into the Trillions of Kilometeres, and there are Billions of Billions of Galaxies.
Now change the scale from a Pea to real size!
Space is shockingly HUGE!
Addendum: At this scale (7mm Pea size Sun) and with these incredible distances, Earth is far smaller than a single pixel on the screen you are reading this on