This is our home. To us it seems rather large….but it is just a tiny dot in the universe!
Here is where we are in our solar system. Except that the planets are so spread apart, we have to shove them together to show them all at the same time.
This shows the approximate distance between Earth and the moon.
That distance can be filled with all of the planets side by side. Yeah, the moon isn’t all that close to Earth after all!
This little blob of green is North America compared to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.
Six Earth’s would fit with Saturn’s rings.
Ever wonder what it would look like if Earth had rings? Here is what the rings of Saturn would look like from different places on Earth.
In November, the ESA landed a probe on a comet. Here is how big a comet would be compared to Los Angeles.
Here is one way to see how large our star is compared to the planets. Earth is a tiny dot.
Here is another view of Earth compared to the Sun.
If you were on the Moon, this is what Earth would look like. Do you notice that it doesn’t look like a complete sphere? Why is that?
This photo was taken from the Mars rover. It shows the tiny dot of Earth. Think about how we see Mars from Earth. Not too different, is it?
One of our probes captured a photo of Earth while it was near Saturn.
We also have an image of Earth from just past Neptune.
Meanwhile….on Mars, this is what the Sun looks like. How does it compare to what the Sun looks like from Earth.
Carl Sagan told us that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth.
You thought our Sun was large, but it is nothing compared to a star named YV Canis Majoris. But is YV Canis Majoris the largest star? We don’t know….we may discover one that is even larger.
This shows the different sizes of the Sun and other stars.
This is the Milky Way – our galaxy. The red marker shows where our solar system is.
Here is another view of the Milky Way and where we are in it. Hmmm…..have you ever wondered how we have photos of the Milky Way if we are actually IN the Milky Way? Well, actually, we can’t see our galaxy from above. These are artists guesses based on images of other galaxies.
The tiny dots on the bottom left are our galaxy and some nearby neighbors compared to this monster galaxy called LC 1011.
The Hubble took this long-exposure photo of one little piece of space. When astronomers looked at the image, they were amazed at the number of galaxies that appeared in the image.
This is a galaxy named UDF 423 (astronomers assign numbers/code to the different space objects before they get names). It is billions of miles away and the light take billions of years to travel from where it is to where we are. What you are seeing is billions of years old – and might not even be there now!!
The deep space photo all came from this tiny patch in the sky. Imagine how many more there is out there!
Astronomers tell us that in the center of each galaxy, there is a black hole. This black hole is massive compared to Earth, Earth’s orbit, and Neptune’s Orbit. In fact, the whole solar system does not even compare to NGC 1277.
Here is another graphic showing our solar system.
Here are some other stars that are around our solar system. The Sun is the closest star to Earth, about 93 million miles away. The Sun’s nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, is actually a triple-star system —three stars bound together by gravity. Alpha Centauri A and B are two bright, closely orbiting stars with a distant, dim companion, Proxima Centauri.
Another view of our interstellar neighborhood (the photo before) and where it fits in the Milky Way galaxy.
Other clusters around us.
Even farther out.
This is the observable universe from the tiny dot of superclusters.
