We see pictures of beautiful and colorful nebula provided by the world's best telescopes. Orion's outline can be traced with the human eye and a little creativity. Far away galaxies show patterns of gravitational arms. Most stars we can see are actually two, three, and even four. Our perspective from earth is funny in that we often miss the details for the bigger picture.

Now it is not to say that the bigger picture is more or less important than the details. It does offer us the ability to understand how large-scale physics works, which would be otherwise impossible. It does however introduce problems for studying things nearby.

The gravitational arms of spiral galaxies are a trait we could only easily detect from a distance. These massive arms are dense areas of a galaxy, rotating relatively slowly for an eternity. From inside the same galaxy, it would take countless observations and calculations to determine whether or not you were inside of a gravitational arm.

If you saw Orion from behind, do you think it would look like the same man, and the same belt? In actuality you wouldn't be able to see half of the stars from behind. Many of the stars composing Orion are very bright, and very far away. The rest are progressively closer, and progressively dimmer. From our position in our galaxy this results in us seeing each point on Orion as nearly the same luminosity.

Nebulas are vastly spread out gas particles which at a great distance form a recognizable structure. The Gum Nebula is the closest supernova remnant to our sun. It spans 40 degrees, and resides between 450 and 1500 light-years away. It is so close we can barely see it, and we know almost nothing about it.