The Universe is a vast and expansive place. From any location, you have total freedom to look in any direction you like: up or down, left or right, and near or far, to any distance in any direction…
These two projections show the primordial sky in microwave light as seen by ESA's Planck mission. At left, a hemispherical projection (encapsulating half of the sky) is shown; at right, a Mollweide projection (encapsulating the full sky) is shown. (Credit: ESA/Planck Collaboration (both); Damien George/thecmb.org (L)) Member-only story Ask Ethan: Why are maps of the cosmos always oval-shaped? The Universe is a vast and expansive place. From any location, you have total freedom to look in any direction you like: up or down, left or right, and near or far, to any distance in any direction that you choose. (Well, so long as there isn't anything nearby in the way of a more distant object that you want to observe.) It's like you have a buffet, an omnidirectional buffet, of targets to choose from. You can even imagine observing it all: not just the half of the sky you can see by lying down in a field on a clear night, but in…