TAKE A TRIP: Zoom out past Earth, Venus, Mercury & the Sun. Go beyond the solar system, and out of the Milky Way to our Local Group.
Animation: CXC/A.Hobart
This artist's animation takes a virtual voyage from Earth through the Milky Way galaxy to the outer reaches of the Local Group of galaxies. Leaving Earth we pass the planets Venus and Mercury, then cruise by the Sun, the star of our solar system. We then travel about 24 trillion miles, or 4 light years, before we pass our neighboring stars in the Alpha Centauri complex.
At a distance of a few hundred light years we encounter clouds of dust and gas illuminated by brilliant clusters of young stars. These clouds and star clusters are part of the Orion spiral arm. As we move further out, fifty thousand light years from the Sun, other spiral arms of the Galaxy come into view along with the central bulge, where the Galaxy's supermassive black hole is located. Finally, from a distance of a few million light years, we see the Galaxy as part of the Local Group.
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Chandra X-ray Center, Operated for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory This site was developed with funding from NASA under Contract NAS8-39073.
