From: 3blue1brown
An animation created by Paul D’Steff zooms out by a factor of 10 every three seconds, illustrating the vastness of space. This animation was part of a series of videos discussing how distances to objects in the cosmos are determined [00:00:00], [00:00:04], [00:00:06]. It effectively shows the many seemingly blank orders of magnitude encountered when departing the solar system before the first star is even visible [00:00:15], [00:00:17], [00:00:18], [00:00:21].
Limitations of Cosmic Zoom Animations
While illustrative, these types of powers of 10 zoom outs can risk underselling the true scale of the Universe [00:00:29], [00:00:31]. The implied camera position in such animations moves much faster than the speed of light, making distant objects like other galaxies feel almost accessible [00:00:34], [00:00:37], [00:00:39], [00:00:41], [00:00:43]. In reality, traveling at the speed of light would still take approximately 2.5 million years to reach the nearest galaxy [00:00:46], [00:00:47], [00:00:50], [00:00:51].
When creating the zoom-out animation, there was a significant effort to remain scientifically accurate and avoid falling into the trap of producing only artist renditions of the universe [00:00:53], [00:00:55], [00:00:57], [00:00:59], [00:01:01].
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
To conclude the zoom-out animation accurately, a simple point cloud was used to represent data pulled from the Sloan Galactic Survey (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) [00:01:03], [00:01:04], [00:01:06]. This survey essentially maps the distances to various galaxies across many different directions in the sky [00:01:08], [00:01:10], [00:01:12].
The ability to map and study these galaxies, which are millions and billions of light-years away and beyond direct human grasp, is considered a mind-boggling testament to the powers of science and deduction [00:01:14], [00:01:17], [00:01:18], [00:01:21], [00:01:22], [00:01:24], [00:01:26], [00:01:28]. Through such surveys, patterns like the clusters and strands formed by these billions of galaxies in the vast, unfathomable reaches of space can be studied [00:01:30], [00:01:32], [00:01:34].