The universe is huge. It’s bigger than we can imagine. We can model it, but unless we figure out a way to travel across huge gulfs of space, I don’t think we can ever truly get a complete feeling for how huge it is. But, we CAN measure it. And we have, using various wavelengths of light from the depths of space to do it. The multiwavelength universe tells us what’s out there, how far away it is, but also where WE are.

So, what are the measurements? Let’s start with your every day distances. From your face to the computer screen is somewhere around a third to a half of a meter (9-14 inches for those who use the English system of units). What’s the distance to the nearest park? A few hundred meters? A kilometer? Several kilometers? The distance around the world is roughly 40,000 kilometers. The distance from Earth to the Moon is 384,403 kilometers. To travel from Earth to the nearest star is a distance of 4.1 light-years. (Light travels 1,079,252,848.8 kilometers per hour, do the math!) The distance from our planet to the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is 26,000 light-years; the nearest galaxies are at least 163,000 light-years away. The most distant phenomenon ever measured lies some 13.7 BILLION light-years away. That 13.7 billion is, essentially, the limit of how far we can see. Beyond that is—what? The froth stirred up by the Big Bang.

Considering that most of us human types are no more than a couple of meters or so tall, you can see that on the scale of the universe, we’re pretty small. Our brains aren’t more than a dozen or so centimeters across, but we’ve managed to figure out distances in the cosmos.

If you’re a person who enjoys a visual explanation of distances and scales, check out the Universcale. It’s a fascinating animation of distances and scales in the cosmos. From the tiniest bits of cosmic matter seen by the electron microscope to the scales at which our greatest telescopes offer, you can explore the size of the cosmos in all its variety.