NASA’s Great Observatories Examine the Galactic Center Region – The core of the Milky Way at a distance of some 26,000 light years from Earth., originally uploaded by Smithsonian Institution.
I know I’ve bloggerated this flickr stream before, but I’m doing it again – This is an image made with a combination of the Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra space observatories – known as NASA’s Great Observatories. Hubbie and Spitzie contribute near (yellow) and far (red) infrared wavelengths respectively, Chandie chimes in with X-ray specs (blue and violet).
What are we looking at? The center of our Milky Way – the progenitor of our solar system. If you’re looking for a God, this is a closeup of one of the hundreds of billions of piece’s its currently known to be made of. Compared to the size of the universe, this home of ours (I’m talking galaxy, not the infinitesimal solar system or exponentially more infinitesimal earth) is about the size of an atom.
Think about that for a bit.