The video begins with a man and a woman out on a picnic, then begins zooming out farther and farther. They start with a focus image 1 x 1 meter wide, then zoom out to a field of vision 10 times larger every ten seconds. So, the first zoom out brings the image to 10m x 10m, then 100m x 100 m, and so on. At 10 million x 10 million meters, the entire earth is enclosed in the square, then at 1,000 million x 1,000 million meters, the orbit of the moon around earth is encompassed as well. At the 1 million million meters (10¹²) square, the sun and the four rocky planets are within view, and by the next zoom out (10¹³), the entire solar system is inside the box (save for a clip of Pluto’s orbit). At 100,000 light years (10²¹), most of the Milky Way galaxy is in the box. The farthest they zoom out is to 100 million light years (10²⁴), at which point our own Milky Way galaxy cannot be seen. The galaxies and galaxy clusters in view are spread out, barely visible dots on the screen. The rest of the video zooms back in, all the way down to the picnickers, and then farther to a subatomic level.

What struck me about this video is just how small it made me feel. It reminded me of what Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke of in the foreword of our textbook, about the Hayden Planetarium’s “Passport to the Universe” show. This video is essentially a less encompassing version of what he described there. Having said that, the video is still completely captivating. It’s hard not to be drawn in. As the camera zoomed out, I just felt smaller and smaller, more and more insignificant. While I understand that this could sound a little depressing, I found myself getting more and more excited the smaller I felt. The simplest way to explain my stance is this: The universe is huge, and I am tiny. That means there’s so much for me to learn about and explore in all the vast open space around the miniscule portion that I occupy. Humans are insignificant little specs of stardust in the grand scheme of things, but that just means there’s a lot to discover and we have a lot more exploring to do. Although this class only addresses the confines of our own Solar System, it’s a great starting point for someone like me with no past formal education about anything space related. Suffice to say, it made me all the more excited to keep learning about everything this class has to offer.