English: An illustration of the location of Earth in the Universe. It consists of a series of nine frames that show:
1. The Earth and its natural satellite, the moon.
2. Earth’s location in the inner solar system in relation to other planets and their orbits (distance measures are average distances of objects to the Sun, not the Earth).
3. The Sun's location in the solar system with respect to the outer solar system and its planetary bodies.
4. The solar system’s position amongst the closest stars in the Milky Way.
5. Its location in the Orion arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.
6. The Milky Way Galaxy’s location in the Local Group, its nearest major and minor galaxies.
7. The Local Group’s location within the Virgo Supercluster as part of the larger Laniakea Supercluster.
8. That supercluster’s location amongst the nearest superclusters in the Universe.
9. The observable universe with the local superclusters barely visible in the center.
Each frame contains annotations with the names of astronomical objects (in white) and their distance from Earth (in purple). The blue text indicates the object found in the previous frame. Some items have no distance attached while others are rough approximations or averages due to variances in research findings. Many of the objects and visible distances are inaccurate as they have been increased substantially for illustration purposes. The purple text indicates the real astronomical distances in several units: kilometers, light years (one light year is about 9.5 trillion kilometers, or 5.9 trillion miles), kilolight-years (equal to 1,000 light years), and megalight-years (equal to 1,000,000 light years).
Full Versions:
Largest JPG
Scaled down PNG
Stacked PNG
Individual Frames:
Earth
Inner Solar System
Outer Solar System
Closest Stars
Milky Way Galaxy
Local Group
Laniakea
Local Superclusters
Observable Universe
Objects:
Milky Way Galaxy
Andromeda Galaxy
Triangulum Galaxy
Other Galaxies