A Crowded Universe

I just came across a site called GigaPan, with gigapixel photos, i.e. extremely large pictures. I found there this picture of the central part of our galaxy (take the full screen view). At first you just see this band of light, but when you zoom into the photo (it takes a moment for the image to re-load), you discover millions of stars – we are living in a totally crowded universe. Awe-inspiring. It made me think of the famous sentence by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1788): “Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

Photo of the central part of our galaxy, by esoepod (c)