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The Sun is currently 5–30 parsecs (16–98 ly) above, or north of, the central plane of the Galactic disk. [104] The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Perseus Arm, is about 2,000 parsecs (6,500 ly). [105] The Sun, and thus the Solar System, is located in the Milky Way's galactic habitable zone. [106] [107]
Ignoring the influence of other Solar System bodies, Earth's orbit, also called Earth's revolution, is an ellipse with the Earth–Sun barycenter as one focus with a current eccentricity of 0.0167. Since this value is close to zero, the center of the orbit is relatively close to the center of the Sun (relative to the size of the orbit).
The position of the Sun in the sky is a function of both the time and the geographic location of observation on Earth's surface. As Earth orbits the Sun over the course of a year , the Sun appears to move with respect to the fixed stars on the celestial sphere , along a circular path called the ecliptic .
Artist's depiction of the Milky Way Galaxy showing the origin and orientation of galactic longitude. The galactic longitude (l) runs from the Sun upwards in the image through the center of the galaxy. The galactic latitude (b) is perpendicular to the image (i.e. coming out of the image) and also centered on the Sun.
The average diameter of the orbit of the Earth relative to the Sun. Encompasses the Sun, Mercury and Venus. [18] Inner Solar System ~6.54 AU 9.78×10 8: Encompasses the Sun, the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) and the asteroid belt. Cited distance is the 2:1 resonance with Jupiter, which marks the outer limit of the asteroid belt ...
Evening sky: Saturn is getting lower in the southwest and sets around 9 p.m. in early January and around 7 p.m. by the end of the month. Brilliant Jupiter is halfway up in the south at sunset and ...
A galactic orientation describes the spatial orientation of a galactic plane, where such exists for a given galaxy.For a spiral galaxy, this can be obtained from the inclination of the galactic plane to the plane of the sky, and the position angle of the major axis as viewed from Earth.
The Galactic Center is the barycenter of the Milky Way and a corresponding point on the rotational axis of the galaxy. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses , which is called Sagittarius A* , [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] a compact radio source which is almost exactly at the galactic rotational ...