The Universe Put Into Perspective

A group of astronomers has put together a fantastic video of our local universe that does an amazing job of giving perspective to something that is so vast in scale it is very difficult to comprehend. In the video you get to see a three dimensional representation of the galaxies relatively nearby, along with the power of some new software used by the astronomers that is able to show this region of the universe using a variety of visual techniques to aid in understanding what is being shown.

Cosmography of the Local Universe from Daniel Pomarède on Vimeo

While this video contains a large amount of technical detail, the animations make it very accessible to the non-technical minded, so I would recommend everyone watch it.  You will gain a whole new perspective on how truly small we are.

The Universe is Unfathomably Large

There are a couple important points, first, notice that this is not a chart of our galaxy and its constituent stars.  Each dot shown represents an entire galaxy, each consisting of around 200 billion stars.  We are but one star of 200 billion, and the Milky Way is but one galaxy in billions.  Also, this is not a chart of the entire universe, or even the entire observable universe, just the galaxies in our general region.  This hardly makes up a fraction of the observable universe.


Three dimensional chart of our regional galaxies (dots), galaxy motion lines, and regional density (color)

Second, you may notice the units used to measure distance are in kilometers per second.  This may sound like a speed, and it is, but what it is describing is the speed at which the galaxy is moving away from us.  Due to the constant expansion of the universe, every galaxy is moving away from our own, and the further a galaxy is from us the faster it is travelling.  This may sound like an awkward method of measurement, but on the scale of the universe, it is one of the only useful methods of measuring distance.