Do you know where you live? No, I don't mean what street you live on, or what city you live in. Where in the universe do you live? With all the great technology we have today, astronomers have a pretty good idea.
We live on planet Earth, one of 8 planets in our solar system. We orbit around an average size star, which is one of about 200 billion (that's right billion) stars in our galaxy the, Milky Way. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, which just means it has "arms" that form a spiral shape. We don't know exactly what the Milky Way looks like, but we have figured out that the Milky Way has 4-5 "arms" that rotate around a black hole (Oh yeah, a black hole!) at the center. The Milky Way probably looks something like the image above. We live about halfway between the center and edge of the galaxy inside one of the spiral arms. (P.S. We are so small that that little red dot on the image covers up us, plus every single star we can see when we look outside at night!)
Now go ask a friend where they live, and when they start to give you their address, stop them and ask them what their "universe address" is! See what sort of answers you get.
Image Credit: http://www.clarkplanetarium.com/blog/cosmic-quiz-question-the-farthest-galaxy
Next Topic: How small are we?
