Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Milkyway is a spiral galaxy some 120,000 light years in diameter and contains approximately 400 billion stars.

The solar system is located within the disc in an arm of the galaxy about 27,000 light years from the galactic centre.  
We move further away and see the Local Galactic group. Milky is one among the many galaxies in the local Galactic group.  
We move further away and see the virgo supercluster. The local Galactic group is a part of the Virgo super cluster.   
We move further away and see that this Virgo super cluster is a part of the Local super cluster.
And then finally we find that the Local super cluster is a small part of the observable Universe.  
This is the extent to which we the humans with all our Scientific and technological achievements in the 21st century have been able to observe.  

Beyond this is all the imagination of the Scientists, equipped with Mathematical and Theoretical Physics calculations. 


Now what you see above is a computer generated image of the Universe, based on the scanned images of the cosmic microwave background(CMB)(by the Plank spacecraft of ESA) of the early Universe when it was just 330,000 years old, combined with complex Astro-physics calculations.  
Now for a reminder of where we started........
In front of the Gopuram(tower) of the temple of Srirangam (or Bhooloka Vaikuntam).  Just imagine how small this tower is, in this observable Universe. 

To be continued.......   

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