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The surface area of your fingernail, held at arms length from your face, encompasses roughly one square degree out of the roughly 41,253 that make up the entire sky. If you were to take that square degree, that is your fingernail, and divide it's surface area into roughly 64 parts, took one of those parts and attempted to see anything, you'd probably come up with nothing.

However, if you just so happened to have a large resolution orbiting telescope do it for you, and set an exposure over 1,000,000 seconds, you'd end up with this:

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2010-01-a-full_jpg.jpg

Every single dot and blur in that image is a galaxy, much like our own. Each one containing easily over a hundred billion stars, much like our sun. An innumerable amount of stars and a breath-taking immensity of space, all in one sixty-fourth of a degree.

How likely is it that we are the center of the universe, that our planet and our race was made with a special purpose, that we as individuals must adhere to? That we are the reason of this universes existence?

More still, how likely is it that we are unique in the universe? That we are the only sentient beings? That we are the only planet with life?

To me, this image speaks for itself to both concerns. If we are the reason for the universes existence, what an awful waste of space. If we are alone in the universe, then we must be more alone than any of us will ever realize. I find both concerns unlikely.

The universe is full of wonder and mystery that we can't even begin to fathom, but this picture allows us, if for just a moment, to experience but a taste of its complexity, very temporarily forcing us to discard our hubris and consider the implications of a universe not designed for us, and not exclusive to us.

A universe where one sixty-fourth of a fingernail contains more stars then we as a species will ever be able to visit in our short tenure within it.

Looking at this picture, and considering all it entails is about the closest thing to a religious experience that I think I'll ever feel.