The big picture

In order to have any appreciation of all the pretty pictures, some background may be in order. My introduction to cosmology was in an atlas of all things. In order to give some context, our 60's vintage Rand McNally atlas had:

* The origin of life
* plate tectonics
* the origin of the solar system
* and (i think) the big bang.

Pretty good for a dozen pages.

Starting at the beginning, lets look at cosmology:

The Universe - courtesy Nasa


Then, just so we understand how we fit in:

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