00:00This is Earth.
00:05This is where you live, and this is where you live in your neighborhood, the solar system.
00:16Here's the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
00:20Doesn't look too far, does it? Think again. At their farthest point, the Earth and the Moon are
00:26252,088 miles away. Inside that distance, you could fit every planet in our entire solar system.
00:33But let's talk about planets. The great red spot on Jupiter, that's about two times as big as Earth.
00:40And Saturn is about nine times wider than Earth.
00:44Saturn's rings are so large that a few of the fragments within them are as large as mountains.
00:50But that's nothing compared to our Sun. Just remember, this is Earth.
00:55And this is Earth from the Moon. This is Earth from Mars.
01:00Here's Earth from just behind Saturn's rings. And here's Earth from just beyond Neptune, four billion miles away.
01:08But a billion's a big number, so let's put that in perspective.
01:11One million seconds equals about eleven and a half days, whereas one billion seconds equals over 31 years.
01:20Let's step back a bit.
01:21Here's the size of Earth compared with the size of our Sun. Terrifying, right?
01:28And here's that exact same Sun from the surface of Mars.
01:34As Carl Sagan once mused,
01:36The total number of stars in the universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.
01:44And there are some stars out there that are much, much bigger than our little, wimpy Sun.
01:52The biggest star we know of, VY Canis Majoris, is about 2,000 times the diameter of our Sun.
01:59But none of those compares to the size of a galaxy.
02:05In fact, if you shrink the size of our solar system down to the size of a quarter,
02:09and shrink the Milky Way galaxy down using the same scale,
02:12the diameter of the Milky Way would be roughly the size of the United States.
02:16That's because the Milky Way galaxy is huge.
02:22Its diameter is about 100,000 light-years wide,
02:25which, when converted to miles, is about 621 quadrillion, 371 trillion, 192 billion, 237 million, 333,890 miles.
02:40Inside of all of that is you.
02:43You live in this tiny, tiny portion of the Milky Way.
02:48But even still, our galaxy is a little runt compared with some others.
02:54NGC 6744, a spiral galaxy similar to our own, is twice as wide as the Milky Way,
03:01stretching over 200,000 light-years across.
03:05It is massive.
03:07But let's think bigger.
03:09In this picture alone, taken by the Hubble telescope,
03:12there are thousands and thousands of galaxies,
03:15each containing millions or billions of stars with their own planets.
03:21Some of the objects seen here may have formed as many as 11 billion years ago,
03:26just 3 billion years after the Big Bang.
03:28This period of time is considered one of the busiest star-forming periods.
03:36And just keep this in mind.
03:38That's a picture of a very small, small part of the universe.
03:42It's not a galaxy.
03:45It's not a planet.
03:48It's not a galaxy.
03:51It's not a planet.
03:54It's not a galaxy.
03:57It's a small, small part of the universe.
04:01So if you're ever feeling upset about your favorite show being cancelled,
04:04or the fact that they play Christmas music way too early,
04:07just remember, this is your home.
04:10Earth.
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