Screen Shots

Looking toward the Solar System, we see the trajectories of the Pioneer (green) and Voyager (yellow) spacecraft. Pioneer is traveling away from the center of the Milky Way and in the year 2050, will be 28 light-hours away (1 light-hour equals 670 million miles or 1 billion kilometers).

Pink lines that connect the stars of the constellations radiate from the Sun, which is at the center of the small sphere. The yellow ellipsoid marks the bar of the Milky Way, the center of our Galaxy. Red objects mark the location of pulsars, yellow labels mark the positions of globular star clusters.

At the center of the 1 billion light-year grid is the Milky Way and our Sun. Surrounding us are the multi-hued Tully galaxies and the blue sheets of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that stretch out billions of light-years away.