tiiigerstyle:

Mike Gottschalk 
The Astronomer’s League 
Poster series  Feb 2011 

These are exquisitely beautiful. Below I’ve transcribed the text from each poster, clockwise from top left:

The Earth  The third planet from the Sun 
This beautiful planet that well call Earth has been around for about 4.54 billion years. We have been around for about 200,000 years. We’ve been here for only .0044% of Earth’s lifetime. 

The Solar System  The Sun keeps us together 
The scale of our solar system alone is so massive that the scale chart only refers to planets and not the distance between them. The distance is so massive that the Earth and all of the outer planets would not fit. 

The Milky Way  1 galaxy out of around 200,000,000,000 
Our entire solar system is this little dot of the Milky Way Galaxy. There are around 300,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way alone, each star having possibly one or more planets in orbit. 

The Universe  A very small part of it 
Any dot or mark that you see is an entire galaxy. There are around 200,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe, each containing billions of stars, each star possibly having some planets in orbit.

Merry Carlmas & Sagan’s Greetings to all! (I prefer to celebrate renowned astronomer and cosmologist Carl Sagan on this day in lieu of any deity.) Regardless, I hope everyone’s had an enjoyable and safe holiday! =)