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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">The Scale of Things</h2>
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<h2>1.5.1 The Aerospace Perspective</h2>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans', Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Image of the Earth viewed from space (Image credit: NASA)</span></em></p>
<p>Aerospace engineering has given humans the freedom to move in three dimensions. However, as we leave the surface of the Earth to fly up through the atmosphere and out into space, our perspective changes. Our minds must grapple with massive dimensions and scales that are rarely, if at all, encountered on Earth. We hope that by watching the video below, you will develop an appreciation for "the aerospace perspective," and begin to comprehend the vastness of the universe, as well as better understand the beauty and fragility of our blue planet.</p>
<p>NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, mentioned in the following video, flew by Pluto in the summer of 2015. The picture below depicts the amount of knowledge gained from this mission by showing a picture of Pluto before and after the flyby. Launched in 2006, New Horizons is an engineering feat that has helped us understand one of the last major unobserved bodies in our solar system. The spacecraft is currently continuing its mission out into the Kuiper Belt.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/courseware/v1/3f9043cb25b1bdf5fafbfc10414a4d87/asset-v1:MITx+16.00x+2T2019+type@asset+block/Pluto_Before_and_After.jpg" alt="Image of Pluto before and after NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flyby in 2015" type="saveimage" target="[object Object]" style="display: block; margin: 20px auto 20px auto;" width="590" height="326" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>Pluto before and after NASA's New Horizons Flyby (Image credit: NASA)</em></p>
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<h3 class="hd hd-2">Video: The Scale of Things: An Aerospace Perspective</h3>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">Additional Resources</h2>
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<h2>1.5.2 Additional Resources</h2>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0in; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">There are a number of excellent resources dedicated to helping people understand the enormous range of scales in the universe. Below are just a few of our favorites. Use the discussion forum to tell us about other resources you may have encountered.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3><a href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/" target="[object Object]">Andromeda Galaxy Photo</a></h3>
<p>In January 2015, NASA released the largest photo ever taken: a high-definition panoramic image of the Andromeda galaxy captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, which consists of 1.5 billion pixels. A zoomable version of the photo allows us to view our galactic neighbor up close, and reminds us that we are but tiny specks in the vastness of the universe.</p>
<p>This photo also has an interesting connection to 16.00x: Prof. Hoffman was one of the astronauts on STS-61, the first Space Shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. It is thanks in part to his work that the Hubble has the precise optical systems necessary to capture such amazing images.</p>
<h3><a href="http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html" target="[object Object]">The Scale of the Universe 2</a></h3>
<p>Developed by high school students Cary and Michael Huang, Scale of the Universe 2 is an interactive simulation that expands upon the concept of a journey through the powers of ten. It allows users to explore the scales of the universe by simply scrolling with a mouse, or clicking on any of the various objects to see more information.</p>
<h3><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0" target="[object Object]">Powers of Ten</a></h3>
<p>Created by Charles and Ray Eames, this classic 1977 film takes viewers on an adventure in magnitudes. It starts at a lakeside picnic in Chicago, and every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only as a speck of light among many others. Then we return to Earth and focus our perspective inward, zooming in with ten times more magnification every ten seconds, ending inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell.</p>
<h3><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxq5QUpO_mE" target="[object Object]">Cosmic Voyage</a></h3>
<p>Similar to the Powers of Ten, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum produced a documentary film in 1996, Cosmic Voyage, which takes viewers on a dramatic journey through 42 orders of magnitude, from the level of subatomic particles to the edge of the observable universe. The film is narrated by Morgan Freeman and was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Documentary Short Subject.</p>
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