More Perspective

The Mount Palomar observatory telescope's reflector (some 16 feet in diameter) sees this much of the sky in its field of vision: hold out a poppy seed at arm's length up against the sky and that's it! If the telescope were to pan the heavens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it would take 1000 years to finally cover the night sky...and that's just the half it can see! Now, in that poppy-seed field-of-view mostly what's seen are not stars, but GALAXIES, each containing untold billions of stars in its own right. Try to get your head around that!! This illustration was presented in "First Light: the Search for the Edge of the Universe" by Richard Preston (1980). Highly recommended; a real cosmic thriller.