| Light Distance |
What Happened on Earth |
Celestial Object we see when that happened. |
Notes about the object |
| 1/67 seconds |
Telephone signal between NYC and LA. |
Satellite in a very high orbit. |
Mostly Russian communications satellites. |
| 1.3 seconds |
Time to take a step |
The Moon |
You've seen it since you were a baby. |
| 8 and a quarter minutes. |
Time it takes you to jog a kilometer. |
The sun |
The source of virtually all of our energy here on
Earth. |
| 4 hours 8 minutes |
Time it takes you to walk 12 miles, 19Km. |
Distance to Neptune. |
The most distant planet. |
| 4 years 3 months |
Time it took you to grow from a baby to a child. |
Proxima Centuri |
The closest star. |
| 100 years |
A very long human life |
Benetnasch, Alkaid, η Ursa Major |
The star at the end of the Big Dipper's handle. |
| 10,000 years |
When humans began farming, writing, and creating
civilizations |
M 103 |
A cluster in Cassopeia, too faint to be seen with
the naked eye. |
| 2.5 million years |
The first humans are evoloving around this time. |
M 31, the Andromeda galaxy. |
The largest galaxy in our local group, our Milky
Way and it will collide in about 5 billion years. |
| 66 million years |
The end of the age of dinosaurs. |
NGC 7582 |
A galaxy in Grus, the crane. It's brighter than
our own Milky Way, especially in X rays. |
| 252 million years. |
The Permian-Triassic extinction. 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species become extinct. |
A 3656 |
A cluster of galaxies in the constellation Pavo. It's at the far edge of the super cluster of galaxies that we're a part of. |
| 600 million years |
First large animals appear on Earth |
Hoag's galaxy |
A mysterious ring shaped galaxy in the constellation Serpens. |
| 2 billion years |
Multi cellular life begins on Earth |
PDS 456 |
It's center alone is as bright as all of M 31 |
| 3.5 billion years |
First simple cells form on Earth |
SDSS J0100+2802 |
One of the brightest quasars known, it's central black
hole is thought be a trillion times more massive thanthe sun. |
| 4.5 billion years |
The Sun and solar system are born. |
RX J1131-1231 |
A massive quasar. It's thought to be 6.1 billion
light years distant. |
| 13.8 billion years |
The big bang. The universe forms. |
The 2.7°K background radiation. |
Visible from Earth only with a microwave telescope, but well studied by satellites. It's the afterglow of the big bang. |