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I was looking at a picture of the Orion Nebula and realized I had no idea how big it was
I found a photo on the community feed last night and thought it was just a pretty cloud. Then I read the caption saying it's about 24 light-years across. I had to look that up, and it turns out that's roughly 140 trillion miles. It just blew my mind that something so huge looks like a tiny smudge in my binoculars. Has anyone else had a moment where the scale of a space object really surprised them?
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the_harper5mo ago
Yeah, that "tiny smudge" thing gets me too, like when I learned the Andromeda Galaxy is wider than six full moons in our sky.
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the_piper5mo ago
Right? Saw a pic once that showed it, blew my mind @the_harper.
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betty_shah4mo ago
Six full moons? Wait, is that visible to the naked eye or just through a telescope?
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