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Our Address

Physics Building 2000 Pennington Rd Ewing Township, NJ 08618 United States

Email Us

physics@tcnj.edu

Call Us

(609) 771-2569

Observatory Image

Understanding the scale of the universe

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. — Carl Sagan

To help understand the scale of the universe we can use proportionality. The distance between the Earth and the Sun is 1 au (which is astronomical units). There are 63241.1 au in one light year. There are 63360 inches in a mile. If we scale the universe down to the point where the distance between the Earth and the Sun is one inch then one light year would be approximately one mile.

Contact Us

Physics Building
2000 Pennington Rd
Ewing Township, NJ 08618
United States

Phone: 609 771-2569
Email: physics@tcnj.edu

The Observatory

Webmaster: Joe Petrecca