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Diagram of the Milky Way, with galactic features and the relative position of the Solar System labeled. 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 Milky Way is approximately 890 billion to 1.54 trillion times the mass of the Sun in total (8.9 × 10 11 to 1.54 × 10 12 solar masses), [7][8][9] although stars and planets make up only a small part of this. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used.
A diagram comparing size (artist's impression) and orbital position of planet Kepler-22b within Sun-like star Kepler 22's habitable zone and that of Earth in the Solar System Discovered in August 2011, HD 85512 b was initially speculated to be habitable, [ 139 ] but the new circumstellar habitable zone criteria devised by Kopparapu et al. in ...
Bottom: Logarithmic scale of the Solar System and Voyager 1 's position. The heliosphere is the magnetosphere, astrosphere, and outermost atmospheric layer of the Sun. It takes the shape of a vast, tailed bubble-like region of space. In plasma physics terms, it is the cavity formed by the Sun in the surrounding interstellar medium.
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. 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.
Milky Way subgroup; Milky Way; Orion–Cygnus Arm; Gould Belt; Local Bubble; Local Interstellar Cloud – immediate galactic neighborhood of the Solar System. Alpha Centauri – star system nearest to the Solar System, at about 4.4 light years away; Solar System – star and planetary system where the Earth is located. Earth – the only planet ...
The spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy through which the Sun is currently travelling. Orbit of the Solar System: 17,200 pc 5.31×10 17: 17.72: 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.
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering 70.8% of Earth's crust.