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The galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the Sun to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. [1] One galactic year is approximately 225 million Earth years. [2]
The apex of the Sun's way, or the solar apex, is the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way. The general direction of the Sun's Galactic motion is towards the star Vega near the constellation of Hercules, at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center. The Sun's orbit about the Milky Way is ...
Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (1 part in 10 7) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth's orbit, whereas Earth's volume is roughly 1 millionth (10 −6) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is 5.2 AU from the Sun and has a radius of 71,000 km (0.00047 AU; 44,000 mi), whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is 30 AU ...
The inclination of the moon's orbit is shown relative to the Ecliptic Plane. The Solar System traces out a sinusoidal path in its orbit around the galactic center. Using Galactic North as the initial frame of reference, the Earth and Sun rotate counterclockwise, and the Earth revolves in a counterclockwise direction around the Sun.
Galactocentric orbit: [2] An orbit about the center of a galaxy. The Sun follows this type of orbit about the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. Heliocentric orbit: An orbit around the Sun. In the Solar System, all planets, comets, and asteroids are in such orbits, as are many artificial satellites and pieces of space debris.
Sgr A*, in turn, is dwarfed by some supermassive black holes detected in other large galaxies such as one with a mass 6.5 billion times greater than that of the sun in a galaxy called Messier 87.
[4] [33] For comparison, the radius of Earth's orbit around the Sun is about 150 million kilometers (1.0 AU), whereas the distance of Mercury from the Sun at closest approach is 46 million kilometers (0.3 AU). Thus, the diameter of the radio source is slightly less than the distance from Mercury to the Sun.
The Sun then shrinks to around 10 times its current size and 50 times the luminosity, with a temperature a little lower than today. It will then have reached the red clump or horizontal branch, but a star of the Sun's metallicity does not evolve blueward along the horizontal branch. Instead, it just becomes moderately larger and more luminous ...