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c/astronomy-photosjuliarodriguezjuliarodriguez1mo agoProlific Poster

Talking to my dad about the Hubble deep field photo changed how I see night sky photos now

He said the whole image covers a patch of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length and I just stood there quiet for a minute, so when you zoom into any of those fuzzy dots, that's an entire galaxy with billions of stars, has anyone else had that moment where a simple number or size comparison just hits different?
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the_hayden
the_hayden1mo ago
Did your dad mention we're looking back in time too? My buddy couldn't sleep for a week after that sunk in.
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claire_young76
Yeah that one gets me every time too.
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grant478
grant4781mo ago
It gets wilder when you realize the further out you look, the further back you're seeing. Andromeda is 2.5 million years away, so that light left before humans even existed. By the time we see it, that galaxy could already be crashing into us.
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