- [Narrator] This is Earth.
(dramatic music)
This is where you live,
and this is where you live in your neighborhood,
the Solar System.
Here's the distance between the Earth
and the moon.
Doesn't look too far, does it?
Think again.
At their farthest points,
the Earth and the moon are 252,088 miles away.
In side that distance, you could fit every planet
in our entire Solar System.
But, let's talk about planets.
The great red spot on Jupiter,
that's about two times as big as Earth,
and Saturn is about nine times wider than Earth.
Saturn's rings are so large
that a few of the fragments within them
are as large as mountains. (intense music)
But, that's nothing compared to our Sun.
Just remember, this is Earth,
and this is Earth from the moon.
This is Earth from Mars.
Here's Earth from just behind Saturn's rings,
and here's Earth from just beyond Neptune,
four billion miles away.
But, a billion's a big number,
so let's put that in perspective.
One million seconds equals about 11 and a half days,
whereas one billion seconds equals over 31 years.
Let's step back a bit.
Here's the size of Earth compared
with the size of our Sun.
Terrifying, right?
And here's that exact same Sun
from the surface of Mars.
As Carl Sagan once mused--
- [Carl] The total number of stars in the universe
is larger than all the grains of sand
on all the beaches of the planet Earth.
- [Narrator] And there are some stars out there
that are much, much bigger than our little, wimpy Sun.
The biggest star we know of, VY Canis Majoris,
is about 2,000 times the diameter of our Sun.
But, none of those compares to the size
of a galaxy.
In fact, if you shrink the size
of our Solar System down to the size of a quarter
and shrink the Milky Way galaxy down using the same scale,
the diameter of the Milky Way
would be roughly the size of the United States.
(dramatic music)
That's because the Milky Way galaxy is huge.
Its diameter's about 100,000 light years wide,
which, when converted to miles,
is about 621,371,192,237,333,890 miles.
Inside of all of that is you.
You live in this tiny, tiny portion of the Milky Way.
But, even still, our galaxy is a little runt compared
with some others.
NGC 6744,
a spiral galaxy similar to our own,
is twice as wide as the Milky Way,
stretching over 200,000 light years across.
It is massive.
But, let's think bigger.
In this picture alone, taken by the Hubble telescope,
there are thousands and thousands of galaxies,
each containing millions or billions of stars
with their own planets.
Some of the objects seen here may have formed
as many as 11 billion years ago,
just three billion years after the Big Bang.
(intense music)
This period of time is considered one
of the busiest star-forming periods.
And just keep this in mind,
that's a picture of a very small,
small part of the universe.
So, if you're ever feeling upset
about your favorite show being canceled
or the fact that they play Christmas music way too early,
just remember, this is your home.
Earth.