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I was wondering the other day after doing some reading, if the sun has an orbit. Turns out that sun does have an orbit. So what exactly is it in orbit around. The sun orbits the center of the Milky way Galaxy. This is known as the period of the sun’s orbit around the center of the Milky way Galaxy. What is astounding is the length of time that this takes. “The Sun’s completes an almost circular orbit of the center (of the galaxy) about every 250 million years.” This is what is known as a Cosmic year. Theres some debate about how long this Cosmic year is but it runs between 223-250 million years. So the last time the sun was in the same position within the milky way was when dinosaurs ruled the planet.

Stangely enough there isnt much in the way of photos I could find regarding the sun’s orbit. So to best get an understanding of how the sun orbits the the center of the Milky way Galaxy I found a photo of the Location of the Solar System in the milky way Galaxy.

Location of the Solar System in the milky way Galaxy

This is a Polar view of the Milky Way Galaxy showing the location of the Solar System.

The sun is one of about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, one of billions of ordinary galaxies in the universe. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, with curving arms of stars pinwheeling out from a center.The solar system is about halfway out on one of these arms and is about 26,000 light years from the center. A light year is about 6 trillion miles.

So that sort of puts us on our own spaceship called earth and we’re rushing around in circles around the center of the Milky way galaxy