Maps: NASA Blue Marble, Black Marble, LRO, MESSENGER, Cassini, New Horizons · Mars: NASA/JPL/USGS Viking mosaic, relief from MGS MOLA (NASA/GSFC, 6x vertical exaggeration) · Jupiter: Hubble OPAL 2019, NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley) (CC BY 4.0), enhanced colour · Sun's limb: NASA/SDO AIA 304 Å · Sun, Saturn, Saturn's rings, Uranus, Neptune, clouds, relief: Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0) · Moons and small worlds: NASA/JPL/USGS; Io, Ganymede, Titan, Triton via CelestiaContent (CC BY, Askaniy Anpilogov et al.); Mimas, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Ceres, Vesta via Stellarium (CC BY 4.0, Oleg Pluton, FarGetaNik) · Bennu, Ryugu, Itokawa, Eros, Arrokoth: shape models NASA PDS / OSIRIS-REx / NEAR / New Horizons (CC0), Ryugu ISAS/JAXA (CC BY 4.0); maps via CelestiaContent (Askaniy Anpilogov, Roman Tkachenko; Stooke, NASA PDS; CC BY) · Positions of the Sun, Moon and planets: JPL DE440 ephemeris (Park et al. 2021, NASA/JPL), 1800-2100; moons: orbits fitted to JPL Horizons (satellite ephemerides JUP365, SAT441, URA184, NEP098, MAR099, PLU060); other orbits: JPL, Minor Planet Center; asteroids and comets: NASA/JPL Small-Body Database (via KStars) · Spacecraft trajectories: NASA/JPL Horizons · Rotation: IAU WGCCRE · Data: NASA NSSDC
Space Simulator
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Scale of the Universe: from quarks to the cosmos in one zoom
One continuous zoom through 62 powers of ten. Start at human size and dive in past an ant, a red blood cell, a virus, DNA, an atom and its nucleus down to quarks and the Planck length; or fly out past Mount Everest, the Moon, the Earth, Jupiter, the Sun, the giant stars Betelgeuse and VY Canis Majoris, the Oort cloud, nebulae, the Milky Way and the Laniakea Supercluster to the edge of the observable universe. Every object is drawn at its true relative size, with its measured size and how many times bigger it is than its neighbours.
How big is the observable universe?
About 93 billion light-years across, or 8.8 × 10²⁶ metres. Light from its edge has travelled for 13.8 billion years, but the space in between has stretched while it travelled, which is why the distance is larger than 13.8 billion light-years.
What is the smallest thing in the universe?
The smallest length that has a physical meaning in today's theories is the Planck length, 1.6 × 10⁻³⁵ metres. Quarks and electrons have no measured size at all: experiments only show they are smaller than about 10⁻¹⁸ metres.
How many times bigger is the Sun than the Earth?
The Sun is 109 times wider than the Earth, and about 1.3 million Earths would fit inside it. The red supergiant Betelgeuse is in turn about 760 times wider than the Sun.
How big is the Milky Way?
Its disc of stars is about 100,000 light-years across. Light takes 8 minutes to reach us from the Sun, 4.2 years from the nearest star, and 100,000 years to cross the galaxy.