Beautiful digital representation of the known universe put together by the American Museum of Natural History. Takes you from Tibet, all the way out 13.7 billion light years, and back. Best to choose the 720p high definition version.
Blurb:
Watch the Six Minute Clip Here"Created by the American Museum of Natural History for the new Rubin Art Museum exhibit Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, the digital simulation uses a decade’s worth of data collected by researchers at the planetarium to give you a sense of just how big the universe really is.
And it’s big.
The data is a part of the Digital Universe Atlas, a three-dimensional representation that notes the exact location of every object ever observed in the sky, from black holes to nebulae and every star and planet in between."
One commenter notes:
"I watched this listening to Funeral of Queen Mary by Purcell. In doing so; I was struck by two very contrasting emotions. Firstly, I was filled with complete wonder at the sheer scale of it all. Then, came a swamping void of nihilism; born aloft from the realisation that if we truly are that small in the grand scheme of things, then absolutely no human endeavour holds any meaning whatsoever on the galactic scale. Think I've gone a little mad. Time for bed."
More:
About the Digital Universe
Looking back on the Milky Way from the globular cluster M54
Looking back on the Milky Way from M54, a globular cluster that's 85,000 light-years from Earth.
Since 1998, the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium have engaged in the three-dimensional mapping of the Universe. This cosmic cartography brings a new perspective to our place in the Universe and will redefine your sense of home.
The Digital Universe Atlas is distributed to you via packages that contain our data products, like the Milky Way Atlas and the Extragalactic Atlas, and requires free software allowing you to explore the atlas by "flying" through it on your computer."
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/universe/about
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Universe_Atlas