Take the ultimate journey through the cosmos, and find out where you really are.
It’s time to get a powerful new perspective on life, the universe, and everything.
Incredibly, that’s just a tiny part of the story.
Our solar journey through space is carrying us through a cluster of very low density interstellar clouds. Right now the Sun is inside of a cloud (Local cloud) that is so tenuous that the interstellar gas detected by IBEX is as sparse as a handful of air stretched over a column that is hundreds of light years long. These clouds are identified by their motions, indicated in this graphic with blue arrows.NASA/Goddard/Adler/U. Chicago/Wesleyan
The first two are easy to grasp, but do you understand the others?
Let’s take them one by one and determine exactly where we are.
Earth
You know this part.
NASA/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images
The Solar System is 4.25 light years from the next star, Proxima Centauri.
It would take about 18,000 years for a spacecraft to reach it.
It’s from 2,000 to 100,000 AU from the sun that’s about two light years.
This magnificent 360-degree panoramic image, covering the entire southern and northern celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet. This gorgeous starscape serves as the first of three extremely high-resolution images featured in the GigaGalaxy Zoom project, launched by ESO within the framework of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, which we see edge-on from our perspective on Earth, cuts a luminous swath across the image. The projection used in GigaGalaxy Zoom place the viewer in front of our Galaxy with the Galactic Plane running horizontally through the image — almost as if we were looking at the Milky Way from the outside. From this vantage point, the general components of our spiral galaxy come clearly into view, including its disc, marbled with both dark and glowing nebulae, which harbours bright, young stars, as well as the Galaxy’s central bulge and its satellite galaxies. As filming extended over several months, objects from the Solar System came and went through the star fields, with bright planets such as Venus and Jupiter.ESO/S. Brunier
In 2019,researchers in Antarctica found dust produced by stars exploding as supernovaswithin the “fluff.”
We, however, exist in a Local Bubble of the Orion Arm.
Local Group
Galaxies in the universe are found in groups.
Some think that the two big galaxies will collide in about 4 billion years.
It’s home to about 100 small groups of galaxies, including our Local Group.
Laniakea Supercluster
Laniakea (pronounced lah-nee-ah-keh-ah) is a “galactic city.”
A huge structure, the Laniakea Supercluster is 500 million light-years in diameter and contains 100,000 galaxies.
Laniakea is Hawaiian for “immense heaven,” and it’s also called the Local Supercluster.
Beyond Laniakea is the observable universe, estimated to be home to two trillion galaxies.
That’s your mind-blowing cosmic address explained surely the ultimate journey.
