This series of pictures show how small our planet Earth is and then how small even our home star (the Sun) is compared to other nearby stars:











And if that is not sobering enough, consider this the next time you look up at the night sky:

There are more stars in our universe than there are grains of sands in all the beaches on earth!


a very small Old Man Mike

Now I know how all those guys who drive Hummers in a city feel.

MoD

What if our universe is really just one atom in a cell of some bug about to go SPLAT on the windshield of a car?

Junkie

BeetleJuice, BeetleJuice, BeetleJuice!

You said it three times!!!.....what were you thinkin!!!

That's amazing how big those planets are!!

lol, wow, that's really cool stuff there Mike. There is a book that you should read if you are interested in the nature of the universe: A Brief History of Time by Hawkins.

but dude, that one star is like wicked big

Thanks. And yep, I've read Hawkins. I can recommend others if you are interested. I do astrophotography and you can see some of my humble work here:

http://www.af9y.com/astro40.htm

Old Man Mike

that stuff is amazing, mike! very awesome stuff.

good post mike

The pics are pretty interesting and actually we still really can't imagine just the magnitude of the larger stars are. I didn't realize how much larger some of the other stars are. Good job.

ASTRONOMY !! One of my earlier adventures as well....

JIM

mike ,question-how come we can all of a sudden see these new planets,stars etc..? when i first heard they found them they dont look any further than the rest of plantes in our solar system. i find it very interesting and both my wife and i were looking through these picks,very cool.

This is the kind of thing that will give me an ice-cream headache for the next week or two as I think about it.

You are probably referring to the recently discovered Xena. Xena is about twice as far away as Pluto and about 100 times dimmer. Let me leave you with a little perspective about the distances involved with planets and stars:

- If the Earth was the size of a grain of sand, the sun would be about 5 feet away. The planet Pluto would be about 220 feet away and that new Xena planet would be about 500 feet away.

- BUT the "nearby" stars shown in the pictures above would range from 500 to 50,000 miles away.

- AND most of the other stars in the universe would be more than 100 Million times the distance of those "nearby" stars

We are both VERY small and VERY far away from most everything in the universe.

Old Man Mike

I just read last night that theyv ruled out jupiter as a planet,is that true?

Light travels very fast. These planets are SOO far away it takes thousands of years for the light to reach earth. We can only see things if light is being reflected off the object. Now since the light of some stars have reached earth they go as a new "Discovery" even know they've been around longer than earth. Some stars even burn out or explode but the light is still on it's way to earth so we don't know it exploded years after it did.

Also, Some stars burn brighter than others. So a star that is sooo far away but burns so bright will appear to be closer to earth than others. Even though the closer star will be dimmer making it look far away.

I think this is the order of hottest/brightest, goes by the color of the star. In order of weakest to strongest.

Orange/Yellow (The sun)
Red
White
Blue

Take a lighter and look at it. The orangeish yellowish is at the top. Then white and blue at the bottom.


Am I a nerd you say? No, just payed attention to the Astronomy section of my science book in 7th grade.

"I just read last night that theyv ruled out jupiter as a planet,is that true?"

There is no actual scientific definition of planet. That said, all but the far fringe consider Jupiter a planet. Most consider the largest objects that orbit a star as planets.

Old Man Mike

Mike, I am quite interested, but if it gets to heavy, I lose my desire to read about it. Any authors who are as understandable as hawkins?

Not only are we far away, but the whole damn thing is expanding too. Stupid unvierse, makes me want to run my appliances all day.

it relly makes me feel small looking at them

Timothy Ferris is becoming the next Carl Sagan. You can check out his books at his website:

http://www.timothyferris.com/

Old Man Mike

With all these other galaxy and stars out there. there has to be life on other planets. Intellegent no but life yes.

Who's to say we have intelligent life here?

Junkie