Of course, we already know that our planet is the third out of the Sun and that we are a part of the group of four rocky planets known as ‘terrestrial’. These include, in order of distance from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth and finally Mars. Beyond Mars, it is a long way until you reach the next planet, which is Jupiter. In between Mars and Jupiter, you find a belt of many asteroids and any space probes sent from our planet to the farthest reaches of the solar system will always find this particular zone the most difficult to negotiate through.
There are a further three planets past Jupiter – Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; plus Pluto which some people still classify as a planet but officially this status has been downgraded to a minor planet.
We are orbiting around our Sun in a galaxy that is known as the Milky Way.
This is what is known as a spiral galaxy and it contains many billions of other stars. As far as our position within this galaxy is concerned, we are about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the Milky Way – the Galactic center – on a tail that spirals around the center.
Our galaxy is one of many that make up what is known as the Local Group.
This is in a Supercluster known as the Virgo Supercluster where you will literally find thousands of galaxies located. Eminently advanced telescopes have allowed us to look deep into space over recent decades: in fact, we have even been able to produce some crude forms of maps that chart the galaxies around us and we have even spotted a dense cluster of galaxies about 1 billion light years away from us that is known as the Sloan Great Wall. This particular feature of space is thought to stretch for an incredible 1.3 billion light years across: so just think about the huge number of galaxies that must be contained here.
When you start to consider the position of our tiny planet in relation to statistics in our Cosmos of this magnitude, it really does leave you feeling extremely insignificant. Although Earth is our home and therefore always very important to us, in the grand old scheme of things, it must be pretty average when you think about the fact that there are billions of other solar systems in the Universe; plus millions and millions of galaxies just like the Milky Way.
