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The Universe - What does it hold?

Ever looked up at the night sky and wondered “What is up there?”, “What does it have?” or “Is that a star or a planet?”, and all types of questions about the tiny little white dots in the dark expanse?

We have been curious about the universe since the start of the oldest civilisations. Then, we advanced enough to go and explore that unknown thing which has confused us for so long! Man went to space in 1961, and landed on the Moon just 8 years later. But why do we care about something which we can’t figure out after several millennia?

This is because humankind has and always will be curious to learn about new things, but it isn’t the only reason. We are searching for other living beings in the universe and also seeing whether we have a place among the stars in the future. Another reason why exploring space is crucial is that we can look into the past with it. A light year is the distance light travels in a year (in a straight line), approximately 9.46 trillion kilo-meters. So, theoretically if we can make our telescopes powerful enough, we can see the beginning of our universe, 13.77 billion years ago, right after the Big Bang.

The Universe consists of 4% of visible matter and 96% of invisible matter or dark matter. Of the 4%, we have discovered very less.

The above image is a space simulator, with the camera moving at about 1 giga light year per second (9.46073047258 x 10⁺²¹ kilometers per second). Each streak of light is a galaxy, with billions of suns and trillions of planets in each of them. There is a very very large chance that extraterrestrial beings could be present in any of the galaxy. In fact, all the stars that you see in the night sky is just one arm of the spiral Milky Way galaxy.

The universe is indeed larger than what our brains can comprehend and is very mysterious. All humans know is a teeny-tiny blue marble in the middle of a black ocean spreading infinitely in all directions. It is full of surprises and we do not know what comes after!

Ok now enough talking. Check these images out to see our location in the Milky Way galaxy, and a few other cool stuff in space!

Planet Earth, our home!

Saturn with its magestic rings!

Our Solar System, with orbits and labels!

Location of our Solar System in the Milky Way Galaxy. The blue marker shows it. This part is called the Orion Arm.

Sagittarius A*, the blackhole in the middle of our Galaxy!

Picture of Messier 87*, the blackhole that was recently pictured.

Representation of the Messier 87* (Graphical)

Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest galaxy to Milky Way.

IC1101, the largest galaxy known to mankind. It is 50 times Milky Way's size, 2000 times more massive, 5.5 million light years across and is 1.4 Billion Light-Years from Earth.

Our Milky Way Galaxy in the midst of thousands of Galaxies. Each dot of light is a galaxy! The marker shows the location of ours.