@gabrupawpixelsEvery star you can see in this image is a sun. Most of them are larger than our sun. Many of them have their own planetary systems orbiting them right now. The dense glowing band at the center is the combined light of approximately one hundred billion stars — the core of our own galaxy seen edge-on from our position sixty percent of the way out from the center. We are inside this image. Our sun is one of those points of light somewhere in the galactic plane. The dead tree in the foreground stood here for perhaps two hundred years. The light from the galactic core took twenty six thousand years to reach this cliff. The tree and the galaxy in the same frame — two hundred years and twenty six thousand years of light arriving at the same camera at the same moment. Time is a strange and beautiful thing. 🌌🌳

@gabrupawpixelsEvery star you can see in this image is a sun. Most of them are larger than our sun. Many of them have their own planetary systems orbiting them right now. The dense glowing band at the center is the combined light of approximately one hundred billion stars — the core of our own galaxy seen edge-on from our position sixty percent of the way out from the center. We are inside this image. Our sun is one of those points of light somewhere in the galactic plane. The dead tree in the foreground stood here for perhaps two hundred years. The light from the galactic core took twenty six thousand years to reach this cliff. The tree and the galaxy in the same frame — two hundred years and twenty six thousand years of light arriving at the same camera at the same moment. Time is a strange and beautiful thing. 🌌🌳