Size and Scale of the Universe

Image courtesy of The Cosmic Perspective by Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, & Voit; Addison Wesley, 2002

Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles a second Or 700 million miles an hour In one year light can travel about 9.46 trillion kilometers (that is 9,460,000,000,000 kilometers or 5,880,000,000,000 miles)

The Nearest Stars

Distance to Alpha or Proxima Centauri is ~4 x 1013 km or ~4.3 light years Distance between Alpha and Proxima Centauri is ~23 AU

The Solar System

Our entire Solar System out to Pluto is only one eighthundredth of a light year across The distance to our nearest neighbors, Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light years

LIGHT YEAR: GOING BACK IN TIME

Because a light year is directly related to the time light takes to travel through space, it follows that as we look out into the universe we also look back in time If a star is 1 million light years away, it has taken 1 million years for the light to reach us, and the light we are seeing was created 1 million years ago So we are seeing the star as it looked 1 million years ago, not how it looks today

Andromeda Galaxy

Earth
Planet where we all live Comprised primarily of rock Spherical in shape 12,700 km in diameter It would take 17 days to circumnavigate the globe driving a car at 100 km/hr At the speed of light, it would take 0.13 seconds to go all the way around Earth.

Earth to Sun

Distance from Earth to Sun is 1.51011 m This is one Astronomical Unit = 1 A.U.

A convenient measure the Astronomical Unit

It is convenient to measure planetary distances using the Astronomical Unit, or AU 1 AU = average distance between the Earth and the Sun 1 AU ~ 150 million km

Some planetary distances: Mercury: 0.4 AU Mars: 1.5 AU Saturn: 10 AU Pluto: 40 AU

Earth & Sun

The Suns diameter is 109 times greater than that of Earth
Over 1 million Earths would fit inside the Suns volume Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of 150 million kilometers. This distance is called an Astronomical Unit (AU) It would take 11,780 Earths lined up side to side to bridge the 1 AU between Earth and Sun.

The Milky Way Galaxy

The Milky Way Galaxy is a giant disk of stars 160,000 light-years across and 1,000 light-years thick. The Sun is located at the edge of a spiral arm, 30,000 light-years from the center It takes 250 Million years for the Sun to complete one orbit

You Are Here

There are over 100 Billion stars in the Milky Way

The Spiral arms are only 5% more dense than average, and are the locations of new star formation