Let me borrow a few paragraphs from a classic children's Christian magazine we get at our house called Nature's Friend, http://www.naturefriendmagazine.com/. I wonder how many of the Conservative Mennonites out there know this magazine has a website (the plain folks that is - women wear head covering, congregations shy away from the internet, no musical instruments, etc.)? I just realized myself that they have a website. While both I and the folks at the Conservative Mennonite Church I attend love each other with God's rich abundant love, and, love the internet, I'm the only one who uses it. Well, who admits to it anyway.
What a fine magazine though, and here is what they had to say on, "How Far Are Those Stars?" September, 2010 (Oh man. . . they are rrrrreally far.)
"It is difficult to comprehend the vast distances across space, but if we shrink everything down to a more manageable size, we can better realize the vast distances between Earth and the stars.
We'll start by making everything in the universe a billion times smaller. Now the Earth is a bout the size of a pinhead, about .05 inches across (which is a lot bigger than a pinhead by the way) or less than 1/16 of an inch across. At this scale, the Moon would be less than 1/64 inch in size and would be 1.5 inches away. The Sun being much farther away, would be about 49 feet in the distance and would be about 5 1/5 inches in diameter. The planet Jupiter would be about 255 feet away from the Earth, Pluto would lie at almost 2,000 feet.
Now we are ready to go to the nearest star. This is where we take a big jump. Proxima Centauri, the star nearest to us, would be 2,470 miles away. . . "
O.k., this is where I need to get off until I can process.
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