The entire concept of a black hole is difficult to get one’s mind around.It grows on you, over time. When you get a handle on it, it seems to outsiders like it's over in a flash, but it can take forever to wind down when you get up close.
/johnny
My wife gave me the National Geographic World Atlas for Christmas 2 years ago, and some of the best illustrations in the book show the relative sizes of our Solar System, compared to the entire Milky Way, and again in relation to the "nearest" stars. The scale expands to hundreds of millions of light years...if you study the illustrations and consider the scales involved it will give you the chills.
Some of the images we have seen from Hubble are simply staggering. One of my favorites is the Horsehead Nebula. The head is "only" five light years tall....
Consider that one light year is equivalent to about 5,878,786,100,000 miles...and it takes a beam of light a full year to travel that distance...
Now, multiply by five...