01Size529 million lyDist317 million ly
Laniakea Supercluster
The supercluster of galaxy clusters our Milky Way lives inside.
SuperclusterCosmos
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The 93-billion-light-year sphere we can, in principle, see.
Pablo Carlos Budassi (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Observable Universe Andromeda Distance from Earth
18,333×
farther from Earth
Distance from Earth
46.5 billion ly
Observable Universe is roughly 18,333× farther from Earth than Andromeda.
Picture this
Light from the edge of the observable universe has been travelling for the entire 13.8 billion years of cosmic history to reach us — and at the same time, more space keeps appearing in between.
By weight
Most of the universe's mass-energy isn't ordinary matter at all — roughly 68% is dark energy, 27% is dark matter, and only 5% is everything you can see.
The observable universe is everything close enough that light has had time to reach us since the Big Bang. It is a sphere about 93 billion light-years across — and almost certainly a tiny slice of something larger. Past its edge, the rest is forever beyond our horizon.
Did you know?
By most measures, the Milky Way is a fairly large galaxy. Most of the 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe are smaller than ours.
Last updated 2026-05-17
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Scale
The 93-billion-light-year sphere we can, in principle, see.
Size
93.0 billion ly
Tap a dot to preview it. Use the Open stop link to read its full page. Stops are arranged from smallest on the left to largest on the right.
The supercluster of galaxy clusters our Milky Way lives inside.
Our local galaxy cluster — one of thousands in the universe.
Our nearest large galactic neighbour — and our future collision partner.