Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps
by Kees Boeke
(1957)
page 31
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26. In this last picture of the series at reduced scales, we naturally find that all galaxies and groups of galaxies, even the largest of them, are reduced to dots of various sizes. It goes without saying that the placing of them has been of necessity quite arbitrary. The object is merely to give a very faint idea of the inconceivably large number of galaxies in the midst of which our Milky Way is placed. The number of galaxies which are visible with our present telescopes is of the nature of a thousand million. The farthest of these would be at a distance from the earth of 2,000 million light years, that is, something like the length of a diagonal of the large square above. What is drawn here is therefore certainly less than what exists. For the galaxies would be much nearer to each other than the picture shows, and they would continue far beyond its confines. . . .

1 cm. in picture = 1026 cm. = about 100 million light-years. Scale = 1:1026


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This content is from Kees Boeke's book, Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps. It has been placed online without permission.
Copyright (C) 1957 by Kees Boeke. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted, or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photo-copying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission.