Vermont Astronomical Society at Brownell Library

Structures of the Universe By Neil Perlin - The solar system is huge, the distance to Neptune, the farthest known planet, is about three billion miles. But that’s trivial compared to the distance to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, about 4 light years or twenty-five trillion miles. After that, things get really huge. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 100,000 light years across, with each light year equal to about six trillion miles. In turn, the Milky Way is part of the Local Group of galaxies, about ten million light years across. After that, things get mind-bogglingly immense. How immense? Consider superclusters that can exceed one-hundred million light years. Or the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall at about ten billion light years. And out to the Cosmic Web, essentially the overall structure of the universe… as we understand it today. Following the main presentation the recurring monthly presentations will include Constellation of the Month by Terri Zittritsch.