Yes, the Sun - in fact, our whole solar system - orbits around thecenter of the MilkyWay Galaxy. We are moving at an average velocity of 828,000 km/hr. But evenat that highrate, it still takes us about 230 million years to make one complete orbitaround the MilkyWay!
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. We believe that it consists of a centralbulge, 4 majorarms, and several shorter arm segments. The Sun (and, of course, the restof our solarsystem) is located near the Orion arm, between two major arms (Perseus andSagittarius).The diameter of the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years and the Sun islocated about28,000 light-years from the Galactic Center. You can see a drawing of theMilky Waybelow which shows what our Galaxy would look like "face-on" and thedirection in whichit would spin as viewed from that vantage point. Also shown, is thelocation of the Sun inthe big picture view of our Galaxy.
It is interesting to note that recent observations by astronomers suggestthat the Milky Wayis in fact a "barred spiral galaxy", not just a "spiral galaxy". This meansthat rather than asimple spherical bulge of gas and stars at its center, it has instead a"bar of stars" crossingthe central bulge. It might look something like the image shown below ofthe barred spiralgalaxy known as NGC1073. But we still rotate around the center just the same!
"Movement is always relative to the frame of reference. The solar system orbits around the center of the Milky Way — our galaxy — but even within the frame of the solar system, the sun is not exactly static because of the gravitational interaction with the other bodies in the system," Antolin told Space.com
Space.com
Space.com is an online publication focused on space exploration, astronomy, skywatching and entertainment, with editorial teams based in the United States and United Kingdom.
Answer: Yes, the Sun - in fact, our whole solar system - orbits around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. We are moving at an average velocity of 828,000 km/hr. But even at that high rate, it still takes us about 230 million years to make one complete orbit around the Milky Way!
This means that if the sun's orbital pathway remained constant for all this time, it would have completed around 20 trips through our galaxy, and Earth would have been dragged along for around 98% of those trips. However, the sun's orbit has not remained constant over its lifetime.
The Milky Way disk is not flat but warped, according to ESA. As it rotates, it precesses like a wobbling spinning top. This wobble, essentially a giant ripple, circles the galactic center much more slowly than the stars in the disk, completing a full rotation in about 600 to 700 million years.
Yes, the Sun does spin, or rotate. Because it is a gas, it does not rotate like a solid. The Sun actually spins faster at its equator than at its poles. The Sun rotates once every 24 days at its equator, but only once every 35 near its poles.
Our Sun is just one of about 200 billion stars in our galaxy. That gives scientists plenty of places to hunt for exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system.
The Andromeda–Milky Way collision is a galactic collision predicted to occur in about 4.5 billion years between the two largest galaxies in the Local Group—the Milky Way (which contains the Solar System and Earth) and the Andromeda Galaxy.
"The sun orbits the black hole in the center of the Milky Way. We don't have to worry about the solar system falling into the black hole at the center.
The Earth is roughly 20 galactic years old. A galactic year is the amount of time it takes for the Sun to orbit the center of the Milky Way Galaxy once, which is equivalent to about 230,000,000 Earth years. Since Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, you divide that number by 230 million to get 20.
Before 1999, astronomers had estimated that the age of the universe was between 7 and 20 billion years. But with advances in technology and the development of new techniques we now know the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, with an uncertainty of only 200 million years.
So, to leave our Galaxy, we would have to travel about 500 light-years vertically, or about 25,000 light-years away from the galactic centre. We'd need to go much further to escape the 'halo' of diffuse gas, old stars and globular clusters that surrounds the Milky Way's stellar disk.
Universe is a name given to all the matter around us. Our universe is also called the cosmos. It is originally a greek word. In early days it was thought that our Galaxy constituted the entire universe.
The Sun is located on one of the spiral arms, about 25,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy. Even if you could travel at the speed of light (300,000 kilometers, or 186,000 miles, per second), it would take you about 25,000 years to reach the middle of the Milky Way.
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