The universe is so vast it's almost impossible to picture what it might look like crammed into one field of view.



entire observable universe logarithmic illustration Pablo Carlos Budassi

Logarithms help us make sense of huge numbers, and in this case, huge distances. Rather than showing all parts of the universe on a linear scale, each chunk of the circle represents a field of view several orders of magnitude larger than the one before it. That's why the entire observable universe can fit inside the circle.


"Then when I was drawing hexaflexagons for my sons birthday souvenirs I started drawing central views of the cosmos and the solar system," Budassi told Tech Insider in an email. "That day the idea of a logarithmic view came and in the next days I was able to [assemble] it with photoshop using images from NASA and some textures created by my own."

He released the image into public domain, and has created a few other log scales, too.
