galactic gush

practically everything about the universe, in the astronomical sense of the word, has intrigued and captured me for years---from stars and planets to supernovae and galaxies. i'm no expert on any of these things, but just love reading about them, provided they're not full of figures that my brain is not tuned to process.

here's an email, cut-&-paste, which i very enthusiastically penned to my working-group buddies, after i'd read up on some astro facts.



I've been doing quite a bit of reading up on the universe and galaxies and stars. Don't ask me why, its just a current interest I have, and I'm really enjoying it! (:

Let me share something I've learnt:

- Our universe is made up of billions of galaxies (according to scientists).
- Each galaxy is made up of billions of stars.
- Our solar system is part of the Milky Way galaxy (yup, we live in the Milky Way) and our sun is just one of the billions of stars in the Milky Way.
- This is how wide the Milky Way is: 9,500,000,000,000 x 150,000 km. Sorry, I couldn't bother enough to calculate! This means, if you were to travel across the Milky Way, that's how far you gotta walk.

I just had to share this. There's a lot of other incredulously galactical figures..absolutely incomprehensible, which I will not flood you with now!

The immensity of the universe in which we are a part of is absolutely mind-boggling. I don't think we're even supposed to understand it, really... And this is just how BIG our God is. (: it makes me wonder how I can get so caught up in my own infinitesimal "universe" at times...


Absolutely star-struck,
emily



Where I'm currently feeding my galactic appetite for astro-knowledge: http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space.html
What is a light-year? http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question19.html