Encircling the Solar System are the inner and outer planets, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri star, Perseus Arm, Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda galaxy, other nearby galaxies, the cosmic web, cosmic microwave radiation and invisible plasma produced by the Big Bang at the very edges.
Created by musician and artist Pablo Carlos Budassi, the image is based on logarithmic maps of the Universe put together by Princeton University researchers, as well as images produced by NASA based on observations over the past 15 years made by a 2.5-metre, wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico and roving spacecraft.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has created the most detailed three-dimensional maps of the Universe ever made, including spectra for more than 3 million astronomical objects.
Logarithmic maps are a really handy way of visualising inconceivably huge observable Universe.
A full-sized version of the image by Budassi shows a different kind of cosmic visualisation in relation to 100,000 neighbouring galaxies:
Source: nature video on YouTube
