“Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 1”

The Online Photographer:

“Each of these galaxies, of course, comprises millions of individual stars. The objects it shows are between 2.5 and 10.5 billion light years away. To put us in context—an absurd concept, since that simply can’t be done—consider that Voyager 1 has been traveling at approximately 55,000 miles per hour since 1977 and just recently left the earth’s solar system. Assuming it could keep going that long, it would require another 400,000+ years before reaching a second solar system. Just try to extrapolate that kind of scope and scale out to encompass 10,000 galaxies in a patch of sky that can be covered by two crossed needles held at arm’s length. The human imagination is far too paltry a thing.”