Blog of Parag

I listened to an interview with Ed Weiler on Diane Rehm show. He was the chief scientist of the Hubble Space Telescope from 1979 to 1998.

One of his favorite Hubble images was a 36-hour long deep-sky exposure taken in the late 90’s. The area of sky covered in that frame was about 1/100th of Moon disc as seen from Earth. That area is about 100millionth of the whole sky. In that one image more than 300 galaxies were seen. Each with billions of stars in it.

Now, I have a little better understanding of how vast the Universe really is. It is still much bigger than what I can comprehend but, I have a better way to put a scale to it. When it comes to imagining big or vast, human mind has its limitations unless it is presented with an example like this.

Another perspective on vastness of Universe can be found in my previous post, “Pale Blue Dot“.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Monarch hunt
• Pale Blue Dot
• Solar eclipse — contd
• Solar eclipse
• Double rainbow

admin Astronomy, Science