Each rung of the zoom, from the Earth and Moon to the Local Group.
- The Earth and the MoonThe Earth and the Moon, drawn to scale, are two small worlds separated by a gap far wider than either, the only stretch of space people have yet crossed.
- The inner Solar SystemThe inner Solar System is the realm of the rocky planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, with the asteroid belt marking its outer edge before Jupiter.
- The Solar SystemThe Solar System at full scale is the Sun, its eight planets and the Kuiper belt, out to the heliopause where the solar wind gives way to interstellar space.
- The Oort cloudThe Oort cloud is a vast, roughly spherical swarm of icy bodies surrounding the Solar System, so large that the planets’ orbits shrink to a speck at its centre.
- The stellar neighbourhoodThe stellar neighbourhood is the Sun’s immediate surroundings among the stars, a sparse scattering of mostly faint red dwarfs led by the Alpha Centauri system.
- The Local BubbleThe Local Bubble is a cavity of thin, hot gas around the Sun, blown out of the interstellar medium by a series of supernovae, with the Sun sitting inside it.
- The Orion SpurThe Orion Spur view shows the Sun’s stretch of its spiral arm, where the bright stars of our sky, nearby clusters and star-forming clouds share one band.
- The Milky WayThe Milky Way is our galaxy, a barred spiral disc of stars, gas and dust with a black hole at its centre and the Sun far out in its suburbs.
- The Local GroupThe Local Group is the Milky Way’s family of galaxies, ruled by the Andromeda and Milky Way spirals with the smaller Triangulum and a host of dwarfs.
- The sky from EarthThe sky from Earth is the piece’s human-eye view: standing on the ground and looking up, seeing only the stars and glow an unaided eye could pick out.