Big Dog, Big God

This star portrayed above is the largest known star. "Canis Majoris" (Big Dog) is located in the Milky Way Galaxy. It is seven quadrillion times the size of earth and is 3 billion km's across (77,000 times the distance from the earth to the moon).

How big is a quadrillion? A million seconds ago is 12 days in the past. A billion seconds ago is 32 years in the past. One Trillion seconds ago is 31 thousand years in the past. One quadrillion seconds ago was 222 million years ago (million, billion, trillion, quadrillion). In other words, If you counted the earth once per second for each time it would fit inside this star, it would take you 1.5 billion years to count to 7 quadrillion).

Our own sun could fit inside this star 7 billion times (the dot to the left of Canis Majoris represents what would be the size of our sun in comparison). And if Canis Majoris was the Superdome and the Earth was a golf ball, the Superdome would be full of golfballs - 3000 times.

How far is Canis Majoris from Earth? It is 4900 light years....You would need to travel 187,000 miles per second for 4,900 years to get to it (or, would need to travel 5.44 trillion miles a year for 4,900 years).

How big is our own solar system compared to the size of our own galaxy? It would be the same as trying to locate a quarter (25 cents) on the entire North American continent. In the grand scheme, we are very, very microscopic. We are Horton's speck.

Scripture says that God spread out the heavens like a tent and knows each star by name. In the grand scheme, God is titanic.

(below is an actual picture of CM from Hubble)

(thanks Louis Giglio for the info)