18 pictures show how profoundly large our cosmos is

The vastness of the cosmos is almost unfathomable, with humanity being but a tiny speck in the grand scheme of the Universe. One striking image from the International Space Station captured two of the largest islands on the Mascarene Plateau: Réunion and Mauritius. To witness a human on Earth from the International Space Station's altitude, a telescope larger than Hubble would be required.

Earth is merely a small drop in the vast cosmic ocean, with a diameter of just over 10,000 kilometers. Our civilization's experience remains confined to our planet, with a diameter of only 13,000 kilometers. This view of Earth was provided by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, which had to perform flybys of Earth and Venus to reach its destination, Mercury.

The planets in our Solar System vary greatly in size and density, with gas giants being the least dense. Stars, though larger than planets, can still be compared to the size of Earth, with the largest stars reaching up to nearly 2000 times the diameter of our Sun. The heaviest supermassive black holes' event horizons are comparable in scale to these giant stars.

Even the largest stars are dwarfed by extended, aggregate systems such as the Oort Cloud, which spans multiple light-years around stellar systems. Galaxies, in turn, cluster together to form vast structures, with Abell 2029's giant elliptical galaxy, IC 1101, being the largest known galaxy, containing over 100 trillion stars and the mass of nearly a quadrillion suns.