Images from 3000 BC

I love to visit the Astronomy Picture of the Day (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html) and check out what's going on in space, present and very much past.

This pastel painting is an interpretation of the Lagoon Nebula, which seems to be heavily populated....



The Lagoon Nebula is 5000 light years away. Light years is a measurement of time--in this case meaning this view is the way the nebula was 5000 years ago. But you can determine distance too, and the result is, well, astronomical. Light travels 5,865,696,000,000 miles in a year (almost six trillion), assuming no rush hour traffic... which puts the cosmic Lagoon at 29,328,480,000,000,000 miles away. M'gawd, that's even bigger than the US National Debt. The part of the nebula pictured is 50 light years across. Numbers, numbers; fascinating (to me) because they're so astounding, just about ungraspable.

And this is a relatively local nebula. ; )

Check out APOD to see for yourself!