Look at the sector number - you're just a long way away from Sol. ~720 light years, actually. Its all part of the same galaxy though!

Surprised me first time I played the game, i thought it would be fairly close like in Frontier.

I did the trip once in a ship that had something like a 15-20LY jump range, you can imagine that took me quite a number of jumps, although had enough fuel to make a few sequential jumps.  Then i learned the best thing for travelling is to strip the drive from a small ship and stick the biggest Military Drive you can fit (ensuring enough fuel to make a max distance jump).  You can easily get over 50LY jumps then.

You do then have to refuel after every jump, but in terms of real time (not necessarily in-game time, could be as well) it works out quicker for exploration.

Lave to Sol is all inhabited space, so at least you can stop for fuel en route. You'll need those little-used PageUp/PageDown keys to navigate this route!

hmm, distance is a matter of choice or a matter of the real situation (for Lave as well as for other systems known from FE2/FFE).

personally, yes i feel also it's a bit far from Sol, while space is for my choice a little "overpopulated", but fortunately we can change such in the mods.

though expect once a more FE2 compliant distance and position for Lave in my "FFE mod", while in the "Pioneer mod" (not completed yet), situation will be like in a stock pioneer, further expect complete different factions and systems for mods like my "vintage mod" (neither completed) or a already only planned "Fantasy mod" (i "need" this to get all the funny models you find in the web, running in a cool way. "no limits" one could say, to give "Lone Stars" Van a place to live on in 🙂 ).