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kleinbl00  ·  4478 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Tinkering with the Pillars of Creation
This film: http://www.imax.com/hubble/

Gives you a marvelous 3D journey inside the pillars of creation. The humbling thing is that as you swoop around all groovy-like the back of your head says "in order for me to experience any change in perspective at all I would have to be travelling many times the speed of light, in which case I couldn't see this, therefore my perspective is literally impossible."

...which is why I'm afraid I have to share with you that you did your job wrong.

The far pillar is 4 light years. 1 AU is the distance from the earth to the sun - or 8.3 light minutes.

4 light years is about 253,000 light minutes, or AU.

In other words, you're off by three orders of magnitude.

Humbled yet?

Lemme put it another way. At the bottom end of your line would be earth. Somewhere near that top white star, the 2nd one, would be Alpha Centauri A and B.