The Scale of the Cosmos

1
The Scale of the Cosmos

• Seeds chapter 1

2
Objective

• To appreciate that cosmic distances are vast
  compared to us

3
Human scale

• Photo 10m wide
• Zoom factor 1

4
City scale

• Kilometres
• Zoom factor 100

5
Regional scale

• Hundreds of km
• Zoom factor 10,000

6
Planetary scale

• 10 thousand km
• Zoom to 1 million

7
How far the Moon?

• 400,000km distance, so orbit 106 km wide
• Zoom 100 million

8
Sun-Earth distance scale

• AU 150million km
• Zoom 10 billion/1010

9
Solar system scale

• 100 AU across
• Zoom 1 trillion/1012

10
You are here - lost in space

• 104 AU of emptiness
• Zoom factor 1014

11
Stellar neighbours

• 106 AU/17 light years
• Zoom factor 1016(light year63,000AUor
  10 trillion km)

12
Starfield

• 1700ly scale our Sun is lost amongst others
• Zoom factor 1018

13
Galaxy

• 170,000 ly across reveals our galaxy
• Zoom factor 1020

14
Local Group

• 17 million ly across shows our local cluster
• Zoom factor 1022

15
Limits of structure

• A view 1.7 billion light years across reveals
  huge structures composed of galaxy clusters and
  superclusters
• Zoom factor 1024 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
  000