# A cosmic sense of scale

This animation gives a sense of the awe-inspiring scale of some of the known objects in our universe. It is difficult for human minds to comprehend the shear size of distant stars, many of which completely dwarf our own Sun. Here we see some of the most famous objects displayed relative to one another. The animation begins with Earth, which has a radius of about 6.3 million metres, and ends at VY Canis Majoris, one of the largest known stars in existence, with a radius about 1420 times that of our own Sun, or 990 billion metres! Keep an eye on the changing scale underneath the objects to really appreciate the variation in size.

- Kind: Short
- Year: 2016
- Runtime: 1 min
- By: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser
- Archive: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_cosmic_sense_of_scale.webm)
- Licence or status: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) (as the archive states it)
- Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/commons/50118829?play=1)