From home.
To the cosmic web.

A journey through scale, not a flight through time.

The width readout and ruler use one continuous logarithmic scale, from 45,000 kilometres to 2 billion light-years. Each equal slider movement multiplies the distance. A camera pan recentres from Earth to the Sun, then to the Milky Way. There are no jumps to unrelated slides.

Physical radii and approximate mean orbital distances are used within the solar system. Orbits are drawn as circular references in an inclined plane, with planets placed for readability. They are not current positions, a precise ephemeris or a transit forecast. Reference low-Earth and geostationary rings are diagrams, not tracks of specific satellites. Minimum-size markers, labels, atmospheres and glows are enlarged for visibility. The ruler measures the horizontal unprojected distance; tilted shapes appear foreshortened.

Beyond the solar system, distances and approximate spans are researched, but the arrangement is schematic. Star fields, cloud particles, the galactic reconstruction, satellite locations and the web are illustrative populations, not a three-dimensional survey catalogue. The Oort Cloud is inferred, the heliopause and Local Bubble are irregular, and neither is a solid shell. We cannot photograph the Milky Way from outside.

The final web is a deterministic synthetic volume showing the pattern of nodes, filaments and voids. Its light represents matter density, including invisible dark matter, rather than literal glowing threads. Laniakea is a flow-defined region, not a single gravitationally bound object. We do not imply that the Local Group is inside the Virgo cluster. This is a same-era conceptual view: light-travel delays, expansion during the journey and relativistic effects are not simulated. The final frame is a sample of the universe, not its edge or total size.

Details along the way

1. EARTH

   Oceans, continents and a thin atmosphere wrap a planet about 12,742 km across. Scroll down or move the slider to see where home fits into everything else.

   12,742 km · Earth’s mean diameter

2. NEAR-EARTH SPACE

   The rings show a reference low orbit 400 km above Earth and the geostationary orbital altitude of 35,786 km. The atmosphere is a thin skin beside the planet.

   35,786 km · Geostationary altitude above the equator

3. EARTH & MOON

   The Moon is about 384,400 km from Earth on average. The gap is about 30 Earth diameters. Earth and Moon are drawn at their relative physical sizes; the tiny markers stay visible as the worlds shrink.

   384,400 km · Mean Earth–Moon distance

4. THE INNER SOLAR SYSTEM

   Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars orbit the Sun inside the main asteroid belt. The orbital rings show average distances, not where the planets are today. Sunlight needs about eight minutes to reach Earth.

   1 AU · 149.6 million km, Earth’s mean distance from the Sun

5. THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM

   Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants; Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. Neptune’s orbit is about 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth’s. Body markers are enlarged once the real disks become too small to see.

   30 AU · Neptune’s approximate orbital radius

6. THE KUIPER BELT

   Beyond Neptune, icy bodies occupy a broad belt. Its main region extends from roughly 30 to 50 AU. Pluto lives here, along with many smaller objects. The points represent a population, not a complete object catalogue.

   30–50 AU · The main Kuiper Belt, measured from the Sun

7. THE HELIOSPHERE

   The Sun’s outflow of particles makes a cavity in the interstellar gas. Its boundary, the heliopause, is roughly 120 AU away in the directions crossed by Voyager. It is not a rigid sphere, and it is not the end of the Sun’s gravity.

   About 120 AU · Heliopause distance along the Voyager crossings

8. THE OORT CLOUD

   Long-period comets point to a distant, roughly spherical reservoir of icy bodies. Its inner edge may be 2,000–5,000 AU away; estimates for the outer edge reach 100,000 AU. The diffuse shell here is a hypothesis made visible, not a photograph.

   Up to 100,000 AU · An estimated outer reach of the Oort Cloud

9. THE STELLAR NEIGHBOURHOOD

   Proxima Centauri, the nearest star beyond the Sun, is about 4.24 light-years away. Alpha Centauri A and B are slightly farther. A light-year measures distance: how far light travels in one year. The layout is schematic, not a sky chart.

   4.24 light-years · Approximate distance to Proxima Centauri

10. THE LOCAL BUBBLE

    Our stellar neighbourhood sits inside a roughly 1,000-light-year-wide cavity shaped by past supernovae. Clouds around its irregular surface host young stars. The translucent shell illustrates this region; it is not a visible glass bubble.

    About 1,000 light-years · The Local Bubble’s approximate span

11. THE ORION SPUR

    The Sun lies in the Orion Spur, a smaller feature between major spiral arms. Those luminous bands contain stars, gas and dust. The spiral structure is an artist’s reconstruction, since we cannot fly outside our galaxy to photograph it.

    About 26,000 light-years · From the Sun to the Galactic centre

12. THE MILKY WAY

    A central bar and winding arms form a stellar disk more than 100,000 light-years across. The Sun is marked away from the centre. A sparse halo of stars and globular clusters extends beyond the bright disk.

    100,000+ light-years · Approximate width of the Milky Way’s stellar disk

13. GALACTIC COMPANIONS

    Small satellite galaxies accompany the Milky Way. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are among the most prominent. The illustrated halo is not a wall: stars and dark matter become more diffuse with distance.

    Beyond the bright disk · The galactic halo and satellite population

14. THE LOCAL GROUP

    The Milky Way, Andromeda, Triangulum and dozens of smaller galaxies share this gravitational neighbourhood. Andromeda is about 2.5 million light-years from us. The smaller points represent dwarf galaxies, not a complete survey.

    2.5 million light-years · Approximate distance to Andromeda

15. THE VIRGO NEIGHBOURHOOD

    The Virgo cluster is about 54 million light-years away. Clusters hold hundreds to thousands of galaxies, hot gas and dark matter. The Local Group is nearby on this scale, but it is not inside the Virgo cluster.

    About 54 million light-years · From our neighbourhood to the Virgo cluster

16. THE LANIAKEA REGION

    Laniakea was defined using the motions of galaxies after subtracting cosmic expansion. It describes a vast basin of gravitational flows, not a solid object or a single bound cluster. This view shows an illustrative region, not its measured boundary.

    A basin of galaxy flows · One way to define our supercluster neighbourhood

17. THE COSMIC WEB

    Matter gathers into clusters, filaments and sheets around enormous low-density voids. Much of that matter is invisible dark matter. The luminous web is a representative model of this structure, not a photograph or a map of every galaxy.

    2 billion light-years · Width of this illustrative volume, not the size of the universe

Research and image credits

References checked 25 October 2026. Distances are rounded; values for diffuse boundaries are estimates.

• NASA: Earth facts ↗
• NASA: Earth satellite orbit altitudes ↗
• NASA: Moon facts ↗
• NASA/JPL: planetary orbital elements ↗
• NASA: the Kuiper Belt ↗
• NASA: Pluto facts ↗
• NASA: Voyager’s interstellar mission ↗
• NASA: the Oort Cloud and heliopause ↗
• Paris Observatory: our nearest stars ↗
• Harvard & Smithsonian: the Local Bubble ↗
• NASA: our galactic neighbourhood ↗
• NASA: galaxies and the Milky Way ↗
• NASA: Andromeda ↗
• NASA: the Virgo cluster ↗
• Tully et al. (2014): Laniakea ↗
• NASA: large-scale structures ↗
• ESA: the dark cosmic web ↗
• NASA: Earth orbit altitudes ↗

Surface maps: Solar System Scope, CC BY 4.0, adapted with spherical projection and illustrative lighting. The Moon, galaxy and cosmic web are locally rendered illustrations. No paid service, account or API key is needed to explore.