How big is the solar system, really?
Where does it end?
There are three honest answers. The planetary system ends at Neptune, 30 AU out. The Kuiper Belt, home of Pluto and billions of icy bodies, carries on to roughly 50 AU. But the Sun's gravity keeps a grip far beyond that: the Oort Cloud, a vast shell of dormant comets, stretches perhaps 100,000 AU, over 1.5 light-years. By that measure, Voyager 1, our most distant spacecraft after nearly 50 years of flight, has covered less than 1% of the way out.
The Cosmic Zoom carries this on: from the solar system out through the Oort Cloud, the nearest stars, the galaxy, and onwards to the edge of the observable universe: with the real distance across your view counted up as you go.
Keep going
Every figure on this page is a real, rounded value checked against primary sources. Found something out of date? See how we keep it accurate.