The Sun sits about 26,000 light-years from the galactic center, in a minor arm feature called the Orion Spur. The yellow marker is us.
What's real: the Sun's distance and position are measured. What isn't: nobody has photographed the galaxy from outside, so any top-down view is a model. This one is NASA's artist's concept, drawn from Spitzer survey data (NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt). The marker, the callout and the scale bar are ours, placed to its scale. The edge-on view is our own sketch, and its thickness is exaggerated about six times, or it would be too thin to see.
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