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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.
2013 – The galaxy Z8 GND 5296 is confirmed by spectroscopy to be one of the most distant galaxies found up to this time. Formed just 700 million years after the Big Bang, expansion of the universe has carried it to its current location, about 13 billion light years away from Earth (30 billion light years comoving distance). [18]
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 ...
The thin disk of our galaxy began to form when the universe was about 5 billion years old or 9 ± 2 Gya. [15] The Solar System formed at about 9.2 billion years (4.6 Gya), [5]: 22.2.3 with the earliest evidence of life on Earth emerging by about 10 billion years (3.8 Gya).
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 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 timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their natural satellites charts the progress of the discovery of new bodies over history. Each object is listed in chronological order of its discovery (multiple dates occur when the moments of imaging, observation, and publication differ), identified through its various designations (including temporary and permanent schemes), and the ...
Historical models of the Solar System; History of astronomy; Timeline of cosmological theories; The number of currently known, or observed, objects of the Solar System are in the hundreds of thousands. Many of them are listed in the following articles: List of Solar System objects; List of gravitationally rounded objects of the Solar System