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The Milky Way [c] is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
The Sun is part of one of the Milky Way's outer spiral arms, known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm or Local Spur. [270] [271] It is a member of the thin disk population of stars orbiting close to the galactic plane. [272] Its speed around the center of the Milky Way is about 220 km/s, so that it completes one revolution every 240 million years. [269]
The Sun is a lone, G-type main-sequence star inside the galaxy of the Milky Way, surrounded by eight major planets orbiting the star by the influence of gravity, most of them with a cohort of satellites, or moons, orbiting them. The biggest planets also have rings, consisting of a multitude of tiny solid objects and dust.
Sun's habitable zone moves outside of the Earth's orbit, possibly shifting onto Mars's orbit. [120] 7 billion years 2.4 billion years in the future The Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy begin to collide. Slight chance the Solar System could be captured by Andromeda before the two galaxies fuse completely. [137] Post–main sequence
While Earth is located about 26,000 light-years from what's known as the galactic center, the outer portions of the Milky Way are even further, at about 58,000 light-years from our galaxy's ...
Milky Way Galaxy: 30,000 pc 9.26×10 17: Our home galaxy, composed of 200 billion to 400 billion stars and filled with the interstellar medium. [36] [37] Milky Way subgroup: 840,500 pc 2.59×10 19: The Milky Way and those satellite dwarf galaxies gravitationally bound to it. Examples include the Sagittarius Dwarf, the Ursa Minor Dwarf and the ...
Astronomers have spied an intriguing phenomenon in the distant universe — a galaxy that closely resembles the Milky Way — and it’s challenging key theories on how galaxies evolve.
Milky Way subgroup; Milky Way; Orion–Cygnus Arm; Gould Belt; Local Bubble; Local Interstellar Cloud – immediate galactic neighborhood of the Solar System. Alpha Centauri – star system nearest to the Solar System, at about 4.4 light years away; Solar System – star and planetary system where the Earth is located. Earth – the only planet ...