Barbara Carter, age 12, of Milford, Virginia, for her question:

 What is the sun's location in the universe?

Our Island Universe is the vast cart wheeling Galaxy. It is shaped like a round lens with most of its 100 billion star crowded in the dense,thick center. Our sun is located on one of the less populated arms that spiral outward around the middle of the Big Wheel. It is about two thirds of the way along a line from the center to the outside edge. The galactic center is taken to be a dense cloud of stars in the Milky Way beyond the summer constellation Sagittarius. The sun is more or less level with the Galaxy's major flat plane. Its distance from the center is estimated to be about 26,000 light years    and each light year unit equals almost seven million million earth miles.

We live in the suburbs of our Island Universe. But our starry island is surrounded by space and these outer reaches of spice are populated with countless other galaxies These also are part of the cosmic universe. These outer galaxies spread on and on in all directions and at present we have found no end to them. Hence we cannot spot the sun's location in this infinite cosmic universe.