The Vicinity of Our Universe

Earth (and our sun and solar system) is located on the inner arc of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy, not unlike our own Earth, revolves and rotates. For the Milky Way galaxy to complete one full rotation (pivot) -- our for our solar system to complete one full orbit -- it takes roughly 250 million years! So our solar system has completed about 23 orbits (or 0.0008 orbits since humans) so far. The Milky Way galaxy and the nearby Andromeda galaxy together form a binary system.

• 10 ly -- Neighborhood Stars -- Our nearest star (to our sun) is 7000 times further away than the edge or our solar system. Examples of some stars within 10 lightyears from our sun include, Alpha Centauri, Proxima (a red dwarf), Wolf, and Sirius Nearly 80% of universal stars are red dwarfs (smaller than our sun, 1/10 the size, and 1/100 the luminosity).

• 250 ly -- 1/3 Visible Stars -- This tiny section of the Milky Way galaxy (relative to its enormous size) marks most stars that can be seen with the naked eye. About 1/3 of the visible stars from earth fall into this 250 ly range. We can view about 1500 luminous stars in this range, and some stars near the end of this distance range are N. Vel. and C Pup.

• 5000 ly -- Orion Arm -- -- At 5000 light-years away we zoom out to our location in the Milky Way Galaxy, Orion's Arm. Compared to the large Sagitarius Arm (located near the galactic center), the Orion arm (our sun's location) looks like a fairly minor arm The bright giant and supergiant stars (1000x more luminious than our sun) composing the Orion constellation, make up the most visible stars from this distance. At 100,000x the luminosity of our sun, and 4000 ly away,many consider Rho Cassiopeia (Cas) to be the largest star in our Orion Arm vicinity.

• 50,0000 ly -- Our Entire Milky Way Galaxy -- From here, we can see all arms of our galaxy (Orion, Perseus, Cygnus, and Sagitarius, to name a few) visible as a compact disc, hosting 200 billion stars! You find our sun, buried deep within the Orion arm, 26,000 ly away from the (now visible) galactic center. You can spot the two extremes from this distance -- the super dense clustering of stars near the galactic center ("urban stars":) and then the (rural stars) located in things called galactic clusters that pepper the outlying bit of space of our Milky Way galaxy. In addition to the galactic clusters and extra dense stars (near galactic core), is the dwarf galaxy -- Sagitarius dwarf -- that slowly drifts closer to our galaxy.

• 500,000 ly -- Satellite Galaxies of Milky Way -- Our galaxy has mini galaxies orbitting around (just like Earth has satellite's that orbit around it, including the moon), which can be seen from this distance. Within this distance we can find 225 billion stars, 12 orbitting dwarf galaxies (Draco Dwarf, Sagitarius Dwarf, Ursa Minor Dwarf, for example), and 1 large galaxy.

• 5 mly -- Local Group galaxy cluster -- At 5 million light years, we can see the Local Group, the clustering of dwarf galaxies (Phoenix, Tucana, and Aquarius Dwarf, for example) other spiral disc galaxies, and larger galaxies (Andromeda, Triangulum) to which our Milky Way gravitationally binds.

• 100 mly -- Virgo SuperCluster -- From 100 million light years we can see the neighboring clusters like our Local Group, such as The Virgo, Eridanus, and Fornax Clusters (along with the Local Group cluster), that compose the huge Virgo SuperCluster. The Virgo Supercluster (from 100 mly) encompasses 200 trillion stars,50,000 dwarf galaxies, 2,500 large galaxies, and 200 galaxy groups (Local, Virgo, Fornax, etc).

• 1 bly -- Neighboring Superclusters -- From this distance we can see the neighboring superclusters (Leo, Sextans, Shapley superclusters) to the Virgo Supercluster, randomly clumped together. At 1 bly, there exist 250 quadrillion stars, 60 million dwarf galaxies, 3 million large galaxies, 240,000 galaxy groups, and 100 superclusters. The neighboring superclusters at 1 bly shows only about 7% of the entire universe.

• 14 bly -- Most of Visible Universe -- Here we can see most of the visible universe, beholding in regards to stars, dwarf galaxies, large galaxies, galaxy groups, and supercusters: 3x10^22, 7 trillion, 350 billion, 25 billion, and 10 million