Under The Martinborough Stars

For a really long time, we thought our planet, the Earth, was slap bang in the centre of the whole Universe. Everything we could see above us in the sky had us in the centre. It was a pretty nice feeling.

However, Galilleo and Copernicus a few hundred years ago worked out it was actually the Sun that was in the centre of our Solar System and not us and that we were a mere crumb of rock orbiting it.

We were quite happy thinking that our Solar System was the centre of the Universe, as everything still appeared to orbit us didn’t it? But hang on. Whoops, science came and debunked that too. 

Today, we know Solar System is out on a lonely limb of a massive spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, 30,000 light years away from the galactic centre. 

The Milky Way Galaxy is huge, it would take light 150million years to cross it from end to end. Each point of light we see is a star, each with systems of planets, moons and rocks orbiting it; there are roughly 300 billion stars. But that’s just our Galaxy, we estimate that there are at least 200 billion other galaxies in the Universe. 

To give you an idea about the sizes we are talking about, imagine the Sun as a grain of sand in your palm. Now close up your hand into a fist and you get the rough size of the Solar System. Now imagine your fist is in Australia! Australia represents the size of the Milky Way!

Our Milky Way is only one of a couple hundred billion other galaxies in our Universe. The image you see is a very famous photo called the Hubble Deep Field. This picture was taken when the Hubble telescope was still fairly new, way back in 1995. Pretty much all the spots you see in the photo are other galaxies! There are a couple of stars in the foreground. Hubble scientists have been perfecting this photo ever since, showing us more and more detail about the Universe.

Our Milky Way has about 30 galaxy neighbours which are all clustered together in the Virgo Supercluster. This cluster of galaxies joins many more to become Laniakea super cluster. This still is only a teeny section of the Universe!  

So next time you think the world revolves around you and your actions, take a step outside and look up. Sorry to break it to you, but you are an insignificant and teeny piece of dust in the grand scale of the Universe. 

Becky Bateman runs the award winning Wairarapa stargazing business Under The Stars