neat gif, take a look

http://www.techdo.com/images/largest-know-star.htm

More perspective on relative sizes.



The older kids will love this too.

sheesh. :evilgrin:

I knew our sun was relatively puny, but not *that* puny!

Thanks!

Thanks for posting this.

It reminds me of "The Galaxy Song" by Eric Idle:

Whenever life gets you
down, Mrs. Brown, and
things seem hard or tough,
and people are stupid,
obnoxious or daft and you
feel that you've had quite
enough...

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving,
And revolving at 900 miles an hour,
That's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour
Of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our Galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars
It's 100,000 light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick
But out by us it's just 3,000 light years wide

We're 30,000 light years from galactic central point,
We go round every 200 million years
And our Galaxy is only one of millions and billions
In this amazing and expanding Universe
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know,
12 million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely it is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
Because there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Saw this last night on an episode of The Universe -- about the biggest things in it. Marvelous, beautiful stuff, thank you very much for posting. I have some friends who will really appreciate this gif.

Helps "put things in perspective," eh? ;)

We just emailed it to her science teacher. Thanks!! :hi:

I've only seen a smaller version of it. Thanks for posting it!

--p!

K&R Thanks for posting, I'll be sending that on to a few people. :hi:

I"m singing...

"Our love is bigger than both of us
Bigger than both of us
Big as the stars up above
It's bigger than both of us
Bigger than both of us
Let's not fight it
It's love!"

Just sayin'....

In the most literal sense.

Thank for sharing!

I'm not kidding, it's that big! :P

reminds people how small our species really is compared to the rest of the universe.

Wonderful site.
I am passing it on.

My grad school (physics) son passed it on to me and I thought it was most kool. :)

Too late to rec, though.. :-(

That Rigel star...that gets mentioned in Star Trek.

from the Simpsons.



It's the bottom right star in Orion, the most awesome constellation in the sky:



That red giant in the upper left is Betelgeuse, which was also in the slide show of big stars. That fuzzy red patch in Orion's "sword" hanging from his "belt" is the Orion Nebula:



Rigel's light has been en route to us since the thirteenth century. While it's not the brightest star in our sky because less powerful stars are simply closer (Sirius, the brightest star in our sky is "only" 9 ly away), it's the most intrinsically bright star in our neck of the galaxy: 3,000 ly in any direction.

(I'm a bit of an astronomy geek.)

thanks!

Duppers beat me to it...

No shit!

Ain't we special.:evilgrin:

"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?" -Carl Sagan

Just...damn!

small

I only get the picture of Earth and nothing else. It says wait few seconds, but nada.

If the site is busy, it may take more than a couple of seconds to load.
You're not on dial-up, are you?

and nothing, just the pic of earth and a message to wait. I have DSL, so bandwith shouldn't be a problem. Am I the only one this happened to?

If you can see the pics change there, then you're seeing what I linked to.

Thanks to porkerfan.

Perhaps I lack an active x add-on or something. Oh well, not that crucial. I did see the pic from wikipedia, so I get the gist.