Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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 ...
Compared to many extrasolar systems, the Solar System stands out in lacking planets interior to the orbit of Mercury. [69] [70] The known Solar System lacks super-Earths , planets between one and ten times as massive as the Earth, [69] although the hypothetical Planet Nine , if it does exist, could be a super-Earth orbiting in the edge of the ...
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. One orbital period of the Solar System lasts between 225 and 250 million years. Milky Way Galaxy: 30,000 pc
List of nearest galaxies. This is a list of known galaxies within 3.8 megaparsecs (12.4 million light-years) of the Solar System, in ascending order of heliocentric distance, or the distance to the Sun. This encompasses about 50 major Local Group galaxies, and some that are members of neighboring galaxy groups, the M81 Group and the Centaurus A ...
Below are lists of the largest stars currently known, ordered by radius and separated into categories by galaxy. The unit of measurement used is the radius of the Sun (approximately 695,700 km; 432,300 mi).
Based on results from the Gaia telescope's second data release from April 2018, an estimated 694 stars will approach the Solar System to less than 5 parsecs in the next 15 million years. Of these, 26 have a good probability to come within 1.0 parsec (3.3 light-years) and another 7 within 0.5 parsecs (1.6 light-years). [3]
Estimates dating after 2000 locate the Solar System within the range 24–28.4 kilolight-years (7.4–8.7 kiloparsecs) from the Galactic Center of the Milky Way galaxy. Shift from galactocentrism to acentrism. Hubble's observations of redshift in light from distant galaxies indicated that the universe was expanding and acentric.