NASA Earth Observatory
NASA / Expedition 51 (ISS051-E-039977)
NASA
NASA / Apollo 17 — The Blue Marble (remastered)
NASA / Apollo 8, Bill Anders (AS08-14-2383)
NASA / Viking 1 Orbiter (global mosaic)
NASA / SDO
NASA / JPL-Caltech
NASA / JPL-Caltech (PIA23645)
ESO / M. Kornmesser (CC BY 4.0)
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Adam Evans (CC BY 2.0)
NASA / ESA / Hubble (XDF)
ESA / Planck Collaboration (PIA16873)
Where you are right now
Right now, somewhere on Earth…
This is your whole world — every street you've walked, everyone you know, somewhere under these lights.
City lights are so distinctive from orbit that NASA maps human settlement by their glow alone.
Where you are right now
And every bit of it is reachable from here.
The journey, step by step
2 KM
Where you are right now
This is your whole world — every street you've walked, everyone you know, somewhere under these lights.
City lights are so distinctive from orbit that NASA maps human settlement by their glow alone. (source)
100 KM
The edge of space
A hundred kilometres up, the air simply runs out. Below is everything you've ever touched; above is everywhere else.
The Kármán line at 100 km is the internationally recognised boundary of space, where the atmosphere thins to near-vacuum. (source)
400 KM
Humans live up here — right now
People are orbiting above your head at 28,000 km/h, and they see your city as a smudge of light.
The ISS circles Earth every 92 minutes — its crew watch 16 sunrises a day. (source)
See who's in space right now35,786 KM
Where the sky stands still
From here a satellite hangs motionless over one spot on Earth, turning in perfect step with the ground below.
Geostationary orbit sits 35,786 km up; satellites there circle once every 24 hours, so they appear fixed in the sky. (source)
384,400 KM
The farthest any human has gone
Everyone who has ever lived was inside this frame — except the three astronauts behind the camera.
The Moon orbits 384,400 km away on average; light makes the trip in 1.3 seconds. (source)
Relive Earthrise — Apollo 83.0 LIGHT-MINUTES
The next world
At its closest, Mars is still 140 times farther than the Moon — the nearest place we might one day call a second home.
Mars comes within about 54.6 million km of Earth at closest approach; even then its light takes over three minutes to arrive. (source)
Explore the Mars program8.3 LIGHT-MINUTES
One step from our star
The sunlight on your face this morning left the Sun eight minutes and twenty seconds ago.
Earth orbits 149.6 million km out — one astronomical unit, the meter-stick of the solar system. (source)
Fly the solar system in 3D16.7 LIGHT-HOURS
The Sun's last breath
Out here the solar wind finally gives way to the wind between the stars. Cross this line and you have left the Sun behind.
The heliopause lies about 120 astronomical units out; Voyager 1 crossed it into interstellar space in 2012. (source)
23.2 LIGHT-HOURS
The farthest thing we've ever made
Voyager 1 has been leaving since 1977. It will outlast every building on Earth.
Now more than 160 astronomical units out, its radio signal takes about 23 hours to reach home. (source)
Follow the Grand Tour4 LIGHT-YEARS
The nearest star
The closest sun beyond our own. Its light, leaving today, will reach Earth when a four-year-old has grown to eight.
Proxima Centauri lies 4.24 light-years away and hosts a planet in its habitable zone — the nearest known exoworld. (source)
26,000 LIGHT-YEARS
Our galaxy, our address
Every star you have ever seen with your own eyes lives inside this one image.
The Sun sits about 26,000 light-years from the galactic centre — one star among several hundred billion. (source)
See deeper with JWST2.5 MILLION LIGHT-YEARS
Our nearest galaxy
A trillion suns, close enough to see with the naked eye on a dark night — and falling toward us all the while.
The Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away and is approaching the Milky Way; the two will merge in about 4.5 billion years. (source)
10.0 MILLION LIGHT-YEARS
Galaxies beyond counting
Hold a grain of sand at arm's length: behind it hide ten thousand galaxies.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field found roughly 10,000 galaxies in a patch of sky a tenth the width of the full Moon. (source)
See the invisible universe46.5 BILLION LIGHT-YEARS
The edge of everything we can see
Two trillion galaxies — and the only known place that wonders about them is where you started.
The observable universe spans about 93 billion light-years; light from its edge has travelled 13.8 billion years. (source)