msg0=This girl sits within a one meter square on the campus of the University of Utah, near the Browning building.  This is the scale humans know best, because it is our own scale of the universe.  It's what we see and know.&msg1=This girl sitting in a square on the sidewalk is the center of every picture outward to the view of our solar system and galaxy.  This frame would now encompass a house 10 meters high and 10 meters wide.&msg2=In this 100 meter² view, buildings and walkways are visible.  So how big is 100 meters?  A giant sequoia tree can often reach up to 80 meters high, but very few trees get 100 meters wide.  This is generally a rough maximum limit for living things (plants or animals).  What else is approximately as tall as 10²?  That Statue of Liberty stands 93 meters from the tip of her torch to the ground.  &msg3=This 1 kilometer (1,000 m² view) shows a good view of the central campus of the University of Utah.  In the upper right is the Engineering Building, home of some of the best engineering programs in the western United States (including civil, electrical, mechanical, and ceramic polymer engineering).  The oval-shaped green section in the mid left of the screen is President's Circle, with the main administration building closest to the center, Kingsbury Hall on the north (top to your view), and the Museum of Natural History on the south (bottom to your view).  On the lower right is the Marriott Library, and just out of range is Rice Eccles Stadium, home of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games Opening and Closing Ceremonies in February, 2002.&msg4=This 10 kilometer (10,000 m² view), in which the University of Utah Campus seems to disappear.  The foothills of the Wasatch Mountains are shown, and you can easily see the patterns of fault escarpments and natural watersheds regions within the mountains.  Ten kilometers horizontally across the Earth may not seem that far, but vertically it's approximately the height of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain peak in the world.  The deepest trenches in the Pacific Ocean reach only 10-11 kilometers beneath the surface of the ocean.  This is a very popular scale for arial photography, and many photographs of patterned fields, city layouts, etc. are taken on this scale.&msg5=In this photograph, the Great Salt Lake (mid to upper left) is the main feature.  Utah Lake lies to the south.  It's only source of water is snowfall and spring runoff.  This is the scale of the countryside, and this is also the scale used by the Landsat system.  Landsat satellites record an area of about 185 kilometers from about 500 nautical miles up. Human beings could not see the airplane taking this photograph from the ground - it would be flying so high it could not be picked out.  &msg6=This photograph, taken from a low orbit, includes all of Utah.  The California-Mexico border is located in the lower left-hand corner.  This 1000 kilometer image (1,000,000 m²) displays the Colorado Rockies on the mid right.  Most mountain ranges in North America run north-south, but in Utah there is one exception - the Oquirrh Mountains run east-west.  This is very uncommon.  One of the theories as to why is that the Pacific Plate was subducted under the North American plate.  However, instead of the Pacific Plate being melted in the mantle,   it scraped the underside of the North American Plate, giving rise to an east-west mountain rage very far from the edge of a tectonic plate boundary.  Some geologist even hypothesize that this could be one of the driving mechanisms for the rise of the Colorado Plateau region.&msg7=This frame included the majority of the Earth in 10,000,000 meters² (10,000 km).  The first time this site was ever seen by human eyes occurred in 1967, with the first men to enter space.  Earth's details can be seen - blue sky, (clouds have been removed to see the land detail better) deep blue oceans, and brown land dotted with green plant life.  Can you tell why the Earth is sometimes termed "the Blue Planet"?  We live when satellites allow us to see the Earth is a sphere, but remember in the time of Columbus some people thought the Earth was flat.  &msg8=The whole earth is included in this frame.  Our Earth is recognizable in open space, with brilliant white swirls covering deep blue.  No other planet in our solar system has the amount of liquid water that the Earth has, and this is one reason that scientists believe life as we know it has had a difficult time enduring other planets - none of them has the amount of water neccesary to sustain life.&msg9=The elliptical orbit that is outlined in this frame is that of our moon.  The moon is our nearest neighbor, and its gravitational attraction with the Earth causes the ocean tides seen on our planet. The moon is far enough away that it is plainly another celestial object, and yet the moon is near enough that we can see the features of the moon's surface through simple telescopes.  The first man to set foot on the moon was Neil Armstrong, on July 20, 1969.  The Apollo missions, primarily in the early 1970s, helped us learn what we currently know about the moon.  Do you think humans will ever revisit the moon?  Or perhaps we'll colonize it!  &msg10=The green line is part of the orbit of Earth around our star, the Sun.  The moon's orbit is indicated as the small white elliptical orbit surrounding the Earth.  It has only been recently that humans have come to understand Earth's position relative to other celestial objects.  Spacecraft like Voyager I sent back photos to Earth in the 1970s, showing us views like this one.&msg11=This frame includes planets from the inner solar system.  The center arc is the path traveled by planet Earth for approximately 1½ months of each year.  The left arc is that of Venus, with its hot, thick atmosphere.  We do not know much regarding the planet beneath the thick clouds, primarily because probes that have been sent to Venus have barely lasted one hour once at the surface.  The arc on the right indicates the path of Mars around the Sun.  Although Venus is often called the "twin" of planet Earth, actually Mars' surface has more in common with our own.  Some individuals are currently working on a manned excursion to Mars in the hopes of one day establishing a colony there. &msg12=All of the orbits of the inner rocky planets are included in this frame:  Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.  We can barely see the orbit of planet Jupiter.  In between Mars and Jupiter, asteroids and meteors of varying sizes fill this space.  Our star, the Sun, is situated central to the orbits of all of the planets in our solar system.  &msg13=The paths of the inner rocky planets are within the box frame of reference now.  The paths of the outer planets now fill this picture.  The strongly tilted orbit belongs to Pluto, the planet farthest from the Sun.  Some individuals speculate that Pluto is really an escaped moon, but so far there is not enough conclusive evidence to make a final decision either way.  The other four orbits include Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter.  The planets circle the Sun in a counterclockwise fashion, and here you can see they are all in nearly the same plane as well.  The entire planetary system is flat, like a pancake, with the exception of Pluto.  &msg14=All of the planets (that we know of so far) in our solar system orbit the Sun within the small square that is our frame of reference.  People on Earth can see the planets in the night sky, and they seem to wander in a sky full of patterns that don't seem to change much.  Outside of this square, there are stars too numerous to count.  Remember, stars are not small points but fairly large balls of hot gas.  Our own Sun is an average-size star.  All of these "points of light" only look that way to use because their distance from the Earth is so far away. Beyond the orbit of Pluto, we know that a great big cloud of icy comets orbits very slowly.  It is nearly invisible in the small amount of light it receives from the Sun.  We only see comets when they travel into brighter regions of space near our own planet.  You can identify a comet because of its distinctive tails flowing behind them as they resist the solar wind.&msg15=In this view, the central star is our own Sun.  There aren't any other stars in this picture.  Background stars are left out to show the emptiness and immensity of space around us. There are no other stars within 10 to the 15th or even 10 to the 16th meters of us.&msg16=In this frame, there is one central star that is brighter than anything else.  The distance from one side of the picture to the other is one light year.  That is our Sun, and it only appears brighter because it is so much nearer to us than any other star.  Once we move away from the Sun, we will be able to see that it is only one star among many others.  &msg17=All distant stars serve as suns in some way to the celestial objects that are physically near to them.  The stars we see in the night sky appear to be "fixed" because they do not appear to move.  But stars do have their individual motion, although its very hard to see.  Most of the matter in space is formed into stars, which must be maintained through nuclear fusion to live. &msg18=This picture includes a sky full of distinct stars (background stars are now shown).  Our Sun is too faint to pick out from among them anymore.  This view is 100 light years from Earth.  Scientists estimate that around two thousand star systems are within this range with respect to us here on Earth.  Some of the most prominent stars seen from Earth, like Arcturus and Alpha Centauri, are closer to us in this frame then they are when seen from Earth.  &msg19=This view shows us within the disk of the galaxy.  Almost all of the stars mapped by ancient astronomers lie within the small square that is our frame of reference.  There are billions of stars in our galaxy, but many are too faint to see with the naked eye.  Stars are widely spaced compared to their physical size.  Although stars are not close enough to collide, photos often blur and merge starlight, making the stars appear close to one another. &msg20=Our Sun is so distant it cannot be seen, but it is still central to the image.  Clouds of stars, glowing gases, and interstellar dust (called nebulae) are seen in the spiral pattern of our galaxy's disk.  &msg21=The frame shows the Milky Way spiral. Hundreds of billions of stars circle the central region, bound by gravitational attraction.  Our solar system is orbiting the galactic center, and it makes one revolution approximately every  226 million years.  &msg22=This spiral disk is our own Milky Way Galaxy.  It travels in space with two other satellite galaxies, and irregular clouds called the Clouds of Magellan.  These two satellite galaxies can be seen on dark nights in the far southern skies from Earth.  They look like pieces of the Milky Way that have "broken off."  Not many galaxies are larger than our own.  Galaxies similar to our own are scattered throughout space.  Any galaxy, large or small, is really a swirling mass of countless stars.  &msg23=These are galaxies within our own cosmic region.  Each single bright spot is made up of billions of stars.  Mutual gravity binds these stars into galaxies, or groups of rotating, drifting stars.  &msg24=Gravity causes galaxies to cluster into large or small groups. The Virgo Cluster is located in the center of the image within the frame of reference square.  Some scientists believe our Milky Way Galaxy is a type of "outlier" of the Virgo Cluster.  Beyond the Milky Way there is a fairly large space that has no noticeable galaxies.&