At the entrance to this new exhibition are four images of the Orion nebula. They represent all that this awe-inspiring collection aims to encompass - science, technology, history, beauty.
The first is an exquisite sketch of the nebula in 1835 by Sir John Herschel in the days before photography; the next captures the nebula with the forensic, if flawed, lens of the early camera; the third, a century later sees the pinnacle of glass plate emulsion photography, capturing the nebula in breath-taking colour and in detail. The fourth shows the advances in electronic camera chips with a billion pixel image taken by the Hubble space telescope.
"In these four pictures we have one of the main stories of the exhibition," said curator Dr Marek Kukula, of the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
"Technology has transformed what we can see, therefore what we can understand about the universe. And they are tremendously beautiful in their own right."
Across more than 100 images, the exhibition presents our own solar system in wonderful detail, from a close-up of a sunspot to the mangled moons of Jupiter.
Beyond that, and beyond our galaxy, images peer back in time capturing the abstract choreography of a universe in a constant cycle of destruction and rebirth. Stunning entries in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition make the earth a framing device.
The centrepiece is the Mars Window, a 13m wide curved wall onto which are projected the latest images from NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover to give the viewer an impression of standing there, on that bare, fascinating planet. Other highlights include Edwin Hubble's 1923 photograph which confirmed the existence of galaxies beyond our own; Eddington's 1919 eclipse photo that proved Einstein's theory of relativity; and pictures from the Apollo mission, including the iconic Earth Rise.
But the treasures are also those that arise from the necessary feats of the imagination.
While images of the improbably cinematic sombrero galaxy and the gloriously illuminated Pillars of Creation are aesthetically pleasing, it takes a leap beyond normal comprehension to absorb their reality - that a plume of gas is 57 trillion miles high, that a speck of light has travelled uninterrupted for 13billion years, that the multiplicity of discs are each galaxies, 100 billion stars strong.
It has become an irony that digital FX artists, who specialise in spectacular, unencumbered hyper-reality are now racing to capture the mesmeric light and impact of the real thing captured by Hubble.
Dr Kukula said: "If the thing people come away with is 'gosh, isn't the universe a beautiful place' I will be happy.
"Of course, if they read the labels they will learn some science, and I hope that they do that, and if they come away thinking 'I'd like to find out more' I'd be even happier.
"As a scientist I am often asked to give quite dry explanations of what we've learnt about the universe, it's rare for me to get to say, look the reason I do this is because it's so beautiful and that's what motivates me.
"We live in a really exciting period of history where we are finding the answers to questions that we have puzzled people for thousands of years. Those answers are coming in our lifetimes.
"It's mind-blowing and I want people to come away with that tingling feeling of 'we live in an amazing universe and isn't it amazing human beings are clever enough to work this stuff out? Even though we're screwing up the planet and can't stop fighting each other we can do amazing things'."
The exhibition makes you feel like a tiny, insignificant speck. But in a good way.
Visions Of The Universe, until Sept 15, £8, rmg.co.uk/visions.
What are today's iconic photos
"The really recent one that we scraped into the exhibition looks like an odd one but the [European Space Agency's Planck satellite] has been scanning the sky for microwaves and its produced this mottled image, this is the oldest light in the universe. And it is showing is the clumps of gas that will eventually turn into galaxies. Those really big questions will be the iconic discoveries of the next couple of decades."Dr Marek Kukula, pictured
Picture details
• Main picture, The Sombrero Galaxy (M104)
Like other spiral galaxies, the Sombrero consists of a flat disc of stars surrounding a fatter central "bulge". However, here this central core of stars extends out to encompass the whole of the disc.
© NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team
(STScI/AURA)
• Middle, Orion Deep Wide Field
The three bright stars on the left in this image are the stars of Orion's Belt. Only with long exposure time and a sensitive camera can we see the dramatic landscape of gas and dust clouds
© Rogelio Bernal Andreo, 2009
• Above, Astronauts repairing the Hubble Space Telescope,
This photograph shows astronauts F Story Musgrave (on the robotic arm) and Jeffrey Hoffman (inside the shuttle) during the first servicing mission.
© NASA
