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English: Sun's Path Around the Milky Way. An illustration showing the path of the Sun, Earth and Moon around the Milky Way. The inclinations of the Ecliptic Plane and Celestial Equator are shown with respect to the Galactic North Pole and Galactic Plane. The inclination of the moon's orbit is shown relative to the Ecliptic Plane.
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 Milky Way [c] is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
Pictures from the International Space ... Space Station show what 2024 looked like 250 miles above Earth. ... peering out of the left window and the Milky Way appearing in the background. ...
A model of galaxy rotation based on a general relativity metric was also proposed, showing that the rotation curves for the Milky Way, NGC 3031, NGC 3198 and NGC 7331 are consistent with the mass density distributions of the visible matter, avoiding the need for a massive halo of exotic dark matter. [41] [42]
The Sun is part of one of the Milky Way's outer spiral arms, known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm or Local Spur. [270] [271] It is a member of the thin disk population of stars orbiting close to the galactic plane. [272] Its speed around the center of the Milky Way is about 220 km/s, so that it completes one revolution every 240 million years. [269]
380 Earth radii (very inaccurate, true=16000 Earth radii) Aristarchus of Samos made a measurement of the distance of the Sun from the Earth in relation to the distance of the Moon from the Earth. The distance to the Moon was described in Earth radii (20, also inaccurate). The diameter of the Earth had been calculated previously.
Most of these fast-moving stars are thought to be produced near the center of the Milky Way, where there is a larger population of these objects than further out. One of the fastest known stars in our Galaxy is the O-class sub-dwarf US 708, which is moving away from the Milky Way with a total velocity of around 1200 km/s.