Map of the Universe
From Earth to the edge of the observable universe
A guided tour in 14 stops
1. Earth
Home. The Moon is 384,000 km away; light crosses that gap in 1.3 seconds.
Open this stop in the map · Earth: facts and location
2. Inner planets
The inner Solar System. Earth is 1 AU (150 million km) from the Sun, and sunlight takes 8 minutes 20 seconds to get here.
3. Neptune and the Kuiper belt
Neptune orbits 30 AU out. Beyond it is the Kuiper belt, home of Pluto and many thousands of icy bodies.
4. Heliopause and Voyagers
Voyager 1, launched in 1977, crossed the heliopause in 2012. It is the most distant object people have built.
5. Oort cloud
The Oort cloud of comets may extend beyond 100,000 AU, more than a light-year. Its existence is inferred from the orbits of long-period comets; nobody has seen it.
6. Proxima Centauri
Proxima Centauri is the nearest star, 4.2 light-years away. At Voyager 1's speed the trip would take about 73,000 years.
Open this stop in the map · Proxima Centauri: facts and location
7. Local Arm
The Sun is in the Orion–Cygnus Arm, a short spur between two of the Milky Way's major spiral arms.
8. Milky Way
The Milky Way is a barred spiral about 100,000 light-years across with a few hundred billion stars. The Sun is about 26,000 light-years from the centre.
9. Sagittarius A*
At the very centre sits Sagittarius A*, a black hole of about 4 million solar masses.
Open this stop in the map · Sagittarius A*: facts and location
10. Local Group
The Local Group is the Milky Way, Andromeda, Triangulum and dozens of dwarf galaxies, about 3 million light-years across.
11. Virgo Cluster
The Virgo Cluster holds more than a thousand galaxies, about 54 million light-years away. Its gravity pulls on the whole Local Group.
Open this stop in the map · Virgo Cluster: facts and location
12. Laniakea
Laniakea is the supercluster we live in, defined by where galaxies flow. Its outline here is a schematic circle; the real boundary is irregular.
13. Cosmic web
Out to a billion light-years and more, galaxy surveys show filaments, walls and voids. Each dot is a galaxy with a measured redshift.
14. Observable universe
The edge is the cosmic microwave background, light released 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The matter that emitted it is now about 46 billion light-years away.