Where is Earth?

Updated 15 Dec 2011

This chart shows our location in the universe starting with the planet Earth and zooming outwards (Note: Images 3-8 by Andrew Colvin).


Earth	Our home is a spinning ball of rock travelling through space at about 100,000 km/hr and is known to us as the planet Earth.
Earth-Moon System	The planet Earth is actually part of the Earth-Moon system. Although we think of the Moon as orbiting the Earth, the two bodies actually orbit their common center of mass (which happens to be inside the Earth). Compared to other planet-moon systems in our solar system, our moon is very large relative to its planet and therefore perhaps should be thought of as a companion planet rather than a moon.
Inner Solar System	The Earth-Moon system is, of course, travelling around the sun (a journey that takes about 365 1/4 days). Nearby are several other planets (Mercury, Venus, and Mars) comprising what we call the inner solar system.
Solar System	After Mars comes the asteroid belt and then four more, much larger, planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). After that comes the Kuiper Belt (shown to the left as a fuzzy halo), which is full of smaller objects such as Pluto.
Sun's Neighbourhood	Our sun is just one of many stars in the sky. Some of the stars we see at night (such as Sirius and Alpha Centauri) are located relatively close by, from 4 - 10 light years away. Others, such as Deneb, are much further, up to 1,400 light years away.
Milky Way Galaxy	All the stars that we can see in the night sky are part of a large galaxy called the Milky Way, which actually is comprised of about 100 - 400 billion stars. The thick line to left points to our approximate location in the galaxy.
Local Group	Our galaxy (seen on the right), the Andromeda galaxy (seen on the left), and several other nearby galaxies form what's called the Local Group. Andromeda is located approximately 2.5 million light years away.
Virgo Supercluster	Our local group of galaxies are part of a much larger cluster of galaxies, known as the Virgo supercluster. The center of the Virgo supercluster (the brightest spot in the image) is about 65 million light years away (the local group being the red mark to the left).
The Universe	Our universe is comprised of millions of superclusters. Altogether, there are probably 100 billion galaxies in the observeable universe.
The Multiverse?	Here we cross the line between science and speculation. According to some theories, our universe is actually just one of many universes in what could be called the multiverse. The individual universes in the multiverse have sometimes been likened to bubbles, hence the picture to the left.