G is for galaxy
This planet circles it's sun on one of the outer arms of a swirling mass of stars circling a black hole that is slowly but surely sucking everything in. We are all 'circling the drain' so to speak.
No need to worry though. The human species won't even be a memory when this planet gets sucked in.
The Milky Way (image shows our satillite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds, lower right)
image via http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090926.html
Our beautiful Milky Way, the galaxy we belong to, as seen from this planet, is a stream of sparkling gems and wispy clouds. I remember the first time I saw the Milky Way, or was cognizant of it. I was a pre-teen and we were at the bay house of a friend long before light pollution reached that area. I learned to pick out a few constellations and I've been enamored of the night sky ever since.
an artist's rendition of the Milky Way at 10,000 light years away
They say our Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. This is based on scientific 'stuff' as we cannot actually see what our galaxy looks like from topside. The only view we get is an edge on view.
the Hubble deep field
But we can see many other spiral galaxies. Our view of the universe has been steadily expanding with the construction of better and larger telescopes but until the Hubble orbiting telescope was launched it was easy to think that we were fairly unique. We know now that not only are we not unique, we aren't even particularly different.
We are but one bauble in the sky.
Here are a few others all courtesy of Astronomy Picture Of The Day Archive (search galaxy):
