Comparison of lengths and sizes with order of magnitude 1e17m: hundred light year radius shell with yellow Vernal Point arrow as radius and 10 light year circle at right; globular cluster Messier 5 in background; 12 light year radius Orion Nebula middle right; 50 light year wide view of the Carina Nebula bottom left; Pleiades cluster and Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) with similar diameters each around 10 light years bottom right; grey arrows show distances from Sun to stars Aldebaran (65 light years) and Vega (25 light years). All distances and sizes approximately to scale. No transparency version.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Paul_Stansifer" class="extiw" title="en:User:Paul Stansifer">Paul Stansifer</a>, <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:84user" title="User:84user">User:84user</a>, Robert J. Vanderbei, NASA, ESO, ESA, AURA, Caltech, (see "source" above and "Licensing" below)
2008-12-07
<p>derived from Paul Stansifer's POV-Ray source files (see below), by me, 84user, using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:POV-Ray" class="extiw" title="w:en:POV-Ray">w:en:POV-Ray</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:IrfanView" class="extiw" title="w:en:IrfanView">w:en:IrfanView</a>.
</p><p>84user's contribution (inside POV-Ray files: adjusting coordinates, changing light source and other parameters) is public domain and source files used are described at <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:84user/Size_comparison" title="User:84user/Size comparison">User:84user/Size comparison</a>.
</p><p>Physical information is based on the Wikipedia articles and elsewhere (see POVRay source files) about the respective lengths.
</p>
Paul Stansifer's contributions to this image (POV-Ray code) are available under the GPL, v. 2, and other licenses. See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Paul_Stansifer/Size_comparison" class="extiw" title="en:User:Paul Stansifer/Size comparison">User:Paul Stansifer/Size comparison</a> for more details and the other licenses.