AN INTERACTIVE ATLAS OF THE UNIVERSE
COSMOS EXPLORER
Explore the universe from worlds beside us
to structures billions of light-years away.
Journey through astronomical scale
- Earth system. Earth is 12,742 kilometers in diameter. The Moon's mean distance is 384,400 kilometers.
- Inner Solar System. Earth orbits the Sun at one astronomical unit, or 149.6 million kilometers.
- Solar System. Neptune's mean distance from the Sun is 30.1 astronomical units.
- Stellar neighborhood. Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light-years away. Barnard's Star and Sirius provide wider reference points in the local stellar volume.
- Milky Way. The galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter. The Sun is approximately 26,000 light-years from the galactic center.
- Local Group. The Andromeda Galaxy is approximately 2.5 million light-years away. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds appear as nearby satellites of the Milky Way.
- Cosmic web. The Laniākea supercluster spans approximately 520 million light-years.
- Observable universe. The observable universe is approximately 92 billion light-years in diameter. Its horizon marks the limit of what can be observed, not a physical edge.
The illustrated positions and separations are compressed for legibility and do not form a literal spatial map.