Scale: 10¹⁴ meters = 100 Tm = 100 terameters

Our Sun and a Few Rocks

The solar system now lies almost entirely within the inner square. The planets are invisible in the glare from our bright yellow star. As before, the background stars have been removed. Light requires a bit over 3 days to cross this image and about 6 or 7 days to reach our position 200 Tm from the Sun. At this distance from the Sun there is only an occasional rock or ice chunk floating in the otherwise empty void. It is believed that a huge spherical cloud of unevenly distributed matter orbits the Sun in what is called the Oort cloud. This cloud of rock, ice, and dust is left over from the creation of the solar system and is believed to be responsible for the comets that occasionally come close enough to the Sun to be visible on Earth.