Universe Size Comparison | Solar System to the Observable Universe | 3D 2026

the black hole ton 618 is wider than 40 of our solar systems laid side by side. the biggest structure anyone has claimed is about 10 billion light-years long. the observable universe is 69 quintillion earths across. this is 49 objects at one single scale, from earth to the edge of what we can see. every object sits at its real size next to the one before it. nothing got scaled up to look better. it starts at home. earth, jupiter, the sun. then the stars take over: sirius, polaris, betelgeuse, and stephenson 2-18, a star wide enough to swallow the orbit of saturn. the black hole at the center of our own galaxy shows up between two stars, and it is smaller than arcturus. then the solar system itself turns into a dot. m87*, the first black hole ever photographed, is three and a half solar systems wide. ton 618 is 43. after that kilometers stop working. the ring nebula is one light-year across, and the ladder climbs through the orion nebula, omega centauri and the tarantula into the galaxies. andromeda beats the milky way. the pinwheel beats andromeda. ic 1101, the galaxy everyone calls the biggest, gets beaten twice. the last steps leave galaxies behind: our local group, the virgo supercluster, laniakea, two great walls, and finally the observable universe, 93 billion light-years wide. 0:00 Earth, Jupiter and the Sun 0:23 Bigger than the Sun 0:57 Sagittarius A* 1:55 Betelgeuse 2:19 Stephenson 2-18 2:34 Bigger than the Solar System 2:55 Nebulae and star clusters 3:18 Pillars of Creation 3:34 Orion Nebula 4:22 Galaxies 5:08 Milky Way 5:24 Andromeda Galaxy 5:41 IC 1101 6:04 Bigger than galaxies 6:27 Laniakea Supercluster 6:54 The observable universe on the numbers. planets come from the nasa planetary fact sheet, the sun from the iau nominal radius. star radii come from published measurements. black holes are drawn at the size of their event horizon, worked out from their mass. galaxies use the d25 diameter, which is why the milky way reads 87,400 light-years and not the rounder 100,000 you may have heard. nebula sizes depend on how far away they are, so read them as close, not exact. some of these numbers are still argued over. stephenson 2-18 may be smaller than its 2,200 solar radii. betelgeuse changes size depending on which study you trust. ton 618's mass comes from a model. the tarantula nebula is estimated anywhere from 650 to 1,860 light-years wide. laniakea is 404 million light-years in the newest mapping, not the 520 million from the 2014 paper. and the hercules-corona borealis great wall is a claim built from gamma-ray bursts that other astronomers dispute. on the pictures. every nebula, star cluster and galaxy here is a real photograph from hubble, webb, spitzer, galex and eso telescopes, except the milky way, which nobody has ever photographed from outside. the milky way, the local group, the superclusters, the two great walls and the observable universe are ai-generated illustrations built from published measurements. star surfaces are illustrations coloured by each star's measured temperature. the three black holes are ai-generated renders; only their size is data. credits. earth, jupiter and sun textures: solar system scope, cc by 4.0 (solarsystemscope.com/textures). barnard's galaxy, the triangulum galaxy and the condor galaxy: eso, cc by 4.0. small magellanic cloud: eso/vista vmc, cc by 4.0. large magellanic cloud: eso/vmc survey, cc by 4.0. ngc 604: geckzilla, cc by 2.0. every other photograph is public domain from nasa, esa, csa and stsci. #sizecomparison #universe #space #astronomy #3d #blackhole #galaxy