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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]
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 ...
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 .
The Sun's orbital radius is roughly 8,600 parsecs, or slightly over halfway to the galactic edge. One orbital period of the Solar System lasts between 225 and 250 million years. [34] [35] 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 ...
The galactic coordinate system is a celestial coordinate system in spherical coordinates, with the Sun as its center, the primary direction aligned with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the fundamental plane parallel to an approximation of the galactic plane but offset to its north.
The horizontal, or altitude-azimuth, system is based on the position of the observer on Earth, which revolves around its own axis once per sidereal day (23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds) in relation to the star background. The positioning of a celestial object by the horizontal system varies with time, but is a useful coordinate system ...
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).
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.