If the Milky Way were the size of the United States with the galactic center in Topeka, Kansas, our solar system would be 650 miles away in Columbus, Ohio.
Astronomy: Kellie Jaeger, after Joseph Caruso; Milky Way: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Last month, we scaled down a few currently visible solar system bodies, winding up with a basketball-sized Sun whose most distant major planet, Neptune, is a marble a half mile away. This month, we go galactic, leaving the solar system behind to explore our Milky Way Galaxy.
