Voyage

Within a model of the solar system near Pluto, the immense scale of space is reduced so that the Sun is grapefruit-sized at the far end of the National Air and Space Museum, Pluto lies beyond Neptune, and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, would be a grape on the coast of California 2,500 miles away. The Sun and the stars visible in the night sky belong to the Milky Way, an immense galaxy that is one of billions in the universe and may contain 50 stars for every person on Earth, with most stars having their own solar systems. Light, the fastest thing known, can travel nearly 8 times around the earth in a second, yet even at that speed the distance from the Sun to the next nearest star would be like crossing the continental U.S. as an ant moving 1 inch per second. Just outside Pluto's orbit in February 1990, Voyager I took the first photographs of the solar system from beyond the planets, imaging Earth as one of 6 planets in a family portrait. The solar system circles the center of the Milky Way once every 225 million years, and one orbit ago dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Washington, District of Columbia · United States