departing from our home star on a trip across the cosmos to the edge of the known Universe

Our imaginary journey begins at midnight on January 1st when we prepare to launch into space

at the speed of 186,000 miles/sec

We quickly pass the orbit of Mercury

Venus

And span the 93 million miles that separate the Earth from the Sun in just 8 minutes 19 seconds.

We continue on, passing Mars

Then the gas giant planet Jupiter

Saturn ...

Uranus ...

Neptune ...

Finally after 5 hours and 31 minutes, we race pass Pluto and its companion moon ...

Our journey has taken us more than 3.5 billion miles

to the outer limit of our Solar System and it's still January 1st

Now we alter our flight path and travel in the direction perpendicular to our galaxy

Behind us, the 9 planets and the Sun quickly vanished from sight

The emptiness of space is broken only by the light of stars so distant, they do not yet appear to move

A year passes

then two years

Three

Four years

Finally on April 19th of the 5th year, we reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our Solar System

We have travelled more than 25 trillion miles and our journey has scarcely begun

We are now 10 light years from the Sun, far enough out in space that the stars within our galaxy appear to converge.

100 light years from the Sun,

patterns of gas and nebular's material from the arm of the Milky Way fill our view

1000 light years

The galaxy's arms and disks become more defined

Yet it is not ultil we have travelled at the speed of light for 100,000 years that the entire spiral shape of the Milky Way is recognizable

From here on, each point of light we see is no longer an individual star but an entire galaxy composed of billions of stars

5 million years after beginning our journey,

the Milky Way is seen as part of a cluster of about 30 galaxies known as the Local Group

50 million light years out, we encounter the large Virgo cluster containing more than 2000 galaxies

and so it goes as our travel continue to take us deeper into the cosmos

We pass cluster after galactic cluster, each's a building block of a far greater framework

A billion years passed

5 billion

Finally after 10 billion years we decelerate and pause

to observe the theoretical view of the Universe in large scale structure

Countless billions of galaxies are now seen the comprised chains

masses and thread lights structures that stretch across the cosmos

Separated by enormous regions of empty space

It is a spectacular tapestry

So vast and divers in its design that the power of its creator must truly surpasses all human understanding

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