These pages chronicle the work and ruminations of Carolyn Collins Petersen, also known as TheSpacewriter.

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I am CEO of Loch Ness Productions. I am also a producer for Astrocast.TV, an online magazine about astronomy and space science.

For the past few years, I've also been a voice actor, appearing in a variety of productions. You can see and hear samples of my work by clicking on the "Voice-Overs, Videos and 'Casts tab.

My blog, TheSpacewriter's Ramblings, is about astronomy, space science, and other sciences.

Ideas and opinions expressed here do not represent those of my employer or of any other organization to which I am affiliated. They're mine.

Visit my main site at: TheSpacewriter.com.

**Comments are welcome; I do moderate them to weed out spam.

Contact me for writing and voice-over projects at: cc(dot)petersen(at)gmail(dot)com

I Twitter as Spacewriter

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The Big Picture

April 29, 2009 at 5:01 am | 3 Comments

An Introduction to Large-Scale Structure

Markarian's Chain, part of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, as seen in The Big Picture. Courtesy of the Palomar-Quest Team, California Institute of Technology. (Click to embiggen.)

One of the coolest exhibits I’ve ever seen is taking up a wall at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California. It’s called The Big Picture, and is a deep view of a very small region in the constellation Virgo. It was taken using the Samuel Oschin Telescope on Palomar Mountain in California.

What makes this picture amazing is that it is a single continuous digital sky image, portrayed in porcelain tiles. It has at least a million galaxies and thousands of quasars depicted in it, plus asteroids, and a comet. The galaxies are part of the Virgo Cluster, the nearest big cluster to our own Local Group of Galaxies. Beyond them are the other galaxies, all part of the large-scale structure of the universe.

The Big Picture is the focus of today’s 365 Days of Astronomy podcast — which Mark and I produced. So, go over and check it out. I’ve also got a related page about it and the large-scale structure of the cosmos, here.

You can also see a video I’ve produced about The Big Picture as part of Astrocast.TV starting on May 1. I’ve joined the crew of Astrocast.tv to produce a monthly segment called The Astronomer’s Universe. Either way, be sure and check out this amazing image–it’ll take your breath away.

This blog a wholly pwnd subsidiary of Carolyn Collins Petersen, a.k.a. TheSpacewriter.
Copyright 2008, Carolyn Collins Petersen
Inama Nushif!
Image of Horsehead Nebula: T.A.Rector (NOAO/AURA/NSF) and Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA)

“It is by Coffee alone I set my day in motion. It is by the juice of bean that coffee acquires depth, the tongue acquires taste, the taste awakens the body. It is by Coffee alone I set my day in motion.”

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The Big Picture

An Introduction to Large-Scale Structure