-- Distance from my apartment to Zabar's: 0.6 miles.

-- Distance from my apartment to the red clay tennis courts in Riverside Park: 0.7 miles. -- Distance from my apartment to a storage unit in Catskill, NY, where I store old books and magazines: 117 miles.

-- Distance from NYC to Snowmass Village, CO: 1,979 miles.

-- Distance from NYC to Los Angeles (where one of my sons and his girlfriend live): 2,802 miles.

-- Distance between NYC and Queenstown, NZ: 9,324 miles.

-- Average distance between Earth and the Moon (distances between Earth and other celestial bodies change due to their respective orbits): 238,900 miles.

-- Fastest crewed mission to the moon (Apollo 8): 69 hours and 8 minutes.

-- Average distance between Earth and Mars: 140 million miles.

-- Average travel time to Mars: 270 days.

-- Distance from Earth to Jupiter (at closest approach): 367 million miles. (It can range between 365 million to 601 million miles, depending on where each is in its respective orbit.)

-- Approximate travel time to Jupiter if doing a flyby (Voyager I): 542 days. 

-- Approximate travel time to Jupiter if planning to orbit (Galileo): 2,241 days.

-- Distance from Earth to Saturn (at closest approach): 746 million miles.

-- Approximate travel time to Saturn: 622 days (traveling at a speed of 50,000 mph, about twice the speed covered by astronauts in orbit).

-- Average distance from Earth to Uranus (closest approach): 1.70 billion miles.

-- Approximate travel time to Uranus if doing a flyby: 1,416 days (~3.9 years).

-- Average distance from Earth to Neptune (closest approach): 2.7 billion miles.

-- Approximate travel time to Neptune if doing a flyby: 2,250 days (~6.16 years).

-- Distance from Earth to Pluto: 3.246 billion miles. (To put that into context, it takes light, which travels at a speed of 186,282 miles per second, 4.6 hours to reach Pluto from Earth.)

-- Approximate travel time to Pluto if doing a flyby: 3,460 days (~7 years, 5 months, and 25 days).

-- Distance to the outer boundary of the heliosphere (i.e., the point at which solar plasma emitted by the Sun gives way to the interstellar plasma permeating the Milky Way): 100 AU (i.e, "astronomical unit," a unit of measure used to describe distances within our solar system roughly equivalent to the average distance between the Sun and Earth, about 93 million miles).

-- Date Voyager I spacecraft was launched: September 5, 1972.

-- Date Voyager I is believed to have entered interstellar space: August 25, 2012.

-- Speed at which Voyage I is traveling: 38,210 mph (or about 3.5 AU a year).

-- Approximate distance of Voyager I from the Sun today: 125 AU.

-- Time it will take Voyager I to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud (source of the comets that swing through our solar system): 300 years.

-- Time it will take Voyager I to pass through and out of the Oort Cloud: 30,000 years.

-- Date of Voyager I's next "encounter" with a celestial body: 40,272 AD (when the spacecraft is expected to be within 1.7 light years of the star AC+79 3888). Beyond that, scientists think Voyager I is likely to orbit the center of the Milky Way galaxy until the end of time.

-- Estimates of the number of observable galaxies in the universe: 100 billion to 2 trillion.

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​Some suggest God created humans to give consciousness to the unfathomable immensity that is the universe, ignoring the fact that humans created God to help explain the otherwise terrible immensity that is the universe.