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 Found something out of date?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.