Space is so hard to fathom, but thanks to this image, painstakingly compiled and combined by a musician and artist, one get start to get a sense of it within a single visual frame.

Pablo Carlos Budassi used photos from NASA rovers, orbiting satellites and other astronomical footage, then combined them into a singular shot of the known universe, using Earth as a center point.

The key to the image’s success is the use of a logarithmic scale, which helps viewers understand large numbers and distances more easily, each ring covering vastly greater space than the last. Our world and solar system look relatively large, a helpful jumping off point as the rings expand. The trick works somewhat like the classic Powers of 10 video, a classic educational device for understanding universal and microscopic scales, executed by zooming way out and way in, but with time frames likewise set in a log scale (film shown below, and well worth watching!).

From Colossal: “Budassi was aided by similar (though less visually stunning) logarithmic maps produced by astronomers at Princeton back in 2005. In this map, our sun and solar system are seen in the middle, followed by the Milky Way Galaxy, another ring of nearby galaxies like Andromeda, all the way out to cosmic radiation and plasma generated by the big bang on the furthest outskirts of the image.”

The post Logarithmic Map of the Entire Universe in a Single Image first appeared on Gajitz.

Photography is part skill, part timing, and a great deal of luck, as the photographer of this incredible scene from nature knows first hand, having captured an stunning series of images showing a crow riding an eagle.

Poo Chan has a great deal of wildlife photography experience, but he would never have guessed that these two birds – both with strong personalities and not known for normal interactions – might align in flight for such a strange moment. And if you like this photo, be sure to check the link above – he is amazing at capturing animals in motion, even aside from this once-in-a-lifetime set of shots.

From the photographer: “Crows are known for aggressively harassing other raptors that are much bigger in size when spotted in their territories and usually these ‘intruders’ simply retreat without much fuss. However, in this frame the crow did not seem to harass the bald eagle at such close proximity and neither did the bald eagle seem to mind the crow’s presence invading its personal space. What made it even more bizarre was that the crow even made a brief stop on the back of the eagle as if it was taking a free scenic ride and the eagle simply obliged.”

The post Naturally Amazing: Crow Catches Free Ride on Bald Eagle first appeared on Gajitz.