Outerspace · Scale & Structure Explorer

Scale changes the question.

Move through six teaching bands. The control is a conceptual ladder, not a logarithmically accurate map.

Scale band

Current band

Earth

Teaching model. Distances and object sizes are not drawn to a shared physical scale.

Three reality checks

A useful diagram can preserve sequence, ratio, topology or appearance—but rarely all at once across cosmic orders of magnitude.

NASA lists Earth's equatorial diameter as 12,756 km. This is the most concrete physical anchor in the release.

NASA gives the Milky Way an approximate diameter of 100,000 light-years. A light-year is a distance, not a time.

Large-scale structure is reconstructed from galaxy distributions and simulations; “web” imagery is a visualization language for patterns in data.