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The Solar System is located in the Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of about 100,000 light-years containing more than 100 billion stars. [271] The Sun is part of one of the Milky Way's outer spiral arms, known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm or Local Spur.
The Sun, and thus the Solar System, is located in the Milky Way's galactic habitable zone. [ 106 ] [ 107 ] There are about 208 stars brighter than absolute magnitude 8.5 within a sphere with a radius of 15 parsecs (49 ly) from the Sun, giving a density of one star per 69 cubic parsecs, or one star per 2,360 cubic light-years (from List of ...
The Solar System travels alone through the Milky Way in a circular orbit approximately 30,000 light years from the Galactic Center. Its speed is about 220 km/s. The period required for the Solar System to complete one revolution around the Galactic Center, the galactic year, is in the range of 220–250 million years. Since its formation, the ...
1785 – William Herschel carried the first attempt to describe the shape of the Milky Way and the position of the Sun in it by carefully counting the number of stars in different regions of the sky. He produced a diagram of the shape of the galaxy with the solar system close to the center.
Orbit of the Solar System: 17,200 pc 5.31×10 17: The average diameter of the orbit of the Solar System relative to the Galactic Center. 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 ...
The presumed distance of the Oort cloud compared to the rest of the Solar System. 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 first Indian solar observatory has reached its intended orbit, the country’s space organisation said Saturday, as India seeks to cement its status as an emerging space superpower.
Simulations show that the Milky Way and Andromeda are on a collision course, and are expected to collide in less than five billion years. During this collision, it is expected that the Sun and the rest of the Solar System will be ejected from its current path around the Milky Way. The remnant could be a giant elliptical galaxy. [12]