Does the Sun move around the Milky Way? (Intermediate)

Like the earth revolves around the Sun, Does the Sun revolve around the Milky way?

The Sun does revolve around the Milky Way on an almost circular orbit with a speed of about 220km/s. The Sun completes one revolution in about 230 million years. The Milky Way also moves - we are moving towards our nearest neighbour the Andromeda galaxy and both the Milky Way and Andromeda (which make up most of what we call the 'Local Group of galaxies') are moving towards the Virgo Cluster which is our nearest cluster of galaxies. Nothing seems to stand still at all!

This page was last updated June 28, 2015.

About the Author

Karen Masters

Karen was a graduate student at Cornell from 2000-2005. She went on to work as a researcher in galaxy redshift surveys at Harvard University, and is now on the Faculty at the University of Portsmouth back in her home country of the UK. Her research lately has focused on using the morphology of galaxies to give clues to their formation and evolution. She is the Project Scientist for the Galaxy Zoo project.

Twitter: @KarenLMasters
Website: http://icg.port.ac.uk/~mastersk/