Further to the subject of large colorful information-packed posters (and downsizing and black holes): I forgot to mention several others, including the Titanic, the genealogy of British monarchs, the clans and tartans of Scotland, and this:
A beautiful 1990 product of the Smithsonian, called “No Place Like Home.” It’s a way of showing Earth as a ball in space and at the same time showing, close up, samples of the life on it, animal and vegetable, bird and fish and reptile and mammal, in their habitats of water and air and land. Who wouldn’t delight to come across that woodland pool and meet those diversely elegant creatures! “Sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks”; we had better stop destroying our home.
I don’t know how the artist, Suzanne Duranceau, assembled the picture, but its structure is essentially like the “logarithmic universe” that opens the Astronomical Companion.
As the explanation of that picture says, we could (by changing the number that governs the formula) move in, to show Earth’s surface to larger and larger scales. We could hover over that pool, while at the same time seeing the horizon all around, and the galaxies.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Surely any intelligent alien civilization might consider such a planet worth taking a closer look.