cosmic distance ladder

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." -Douglas Adams Well, maybe "peanuts" isn't going to do. When you look out at the night sky, all sorts of objects are yours to discover, from our closest neighbors in the Solar System to the billions of stars in the Milky Way to the faint, extended and fuzzy galaxies stretching millions and billions of light years across the cosmos. Image credit: Stephane Guisard, via http://sguisard.astrosurf.com/. But…