How big is big?
Scale to speed of light, which we will remember is $c = 300,000$ km/sec.
We zoom out through the solar system (figures to be added) and pause at the local bubble.
The Sun is in a heterogenous neighbourhood, embedded within the "local fluff" within the local bubble, which is part of the local Sco-Cen star forming association.
We are near the Orion spur (minor spiral arm), between the major Sagittarius and Perseus spiral arms.
We are about 8 kpc from the galactic centre. We look at the Milky Way as a whole.
Milky Way disk is maybe about 15kpc in radius (ill defined) with an extended spheroidal halo extending to over 100 kpc
Milky Way is part of a local group of galaxies, in which Andromeda is the major galaxy and the other galaxies are small dwarf galaxies.
Local clusters of galaxies. Especially Virgo cluster.
Structure on 100 Mpc scale. Going out to 2MASS image of local universe, including the superclusters.
Last updated 01/08
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