M81

Here is a beautiful description of what the M81 galaxy meant to an astronomer when he looked at it.

High resolution pictures and more info about M81 can be found here.

If you are not sure what a galaxy is, you should really check this Wikipedia article.

Billions and billions (and billions...) of galaxies, each with billions and billions (and billions...) of stars. Our Sun is just one of these stars. All life on Earth's surface derive their energy input from the Sun.

By the way, M81 is considered quite close to us at about 12 million light-years away. Now, to put that distance in perspective, it took light 12 million years to travel from M81 to Earth. Meanwhile, the speed of light is so great (to us) that light can travel around the Earth 7 times in one second. (Light travels about 300,000 kilometers per second, or about a billion kilometers per hour.)

We live in a really big universe.