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our place in the galaxy
The Sun in the Milky Way
The Sun lies in the Orion Arm, a small side arm of the Milky Way, 26,000 light-years from the centre. It orbits the centre at 830,000 km/h.
Key figures
- Distance from the centre
- 26,000 light-years
- Location
- Orion Arm, a small side arm
- Speed around the centre
- about 830,000 km/h
- One lap
- about 230 million years
- Laps since its birth
- about 20
Interesting facts
- The Sun lies roughly halfway between the centre and the edge – in a quiet neighbourhood, far from the dangerous, radiation-filled centre.
- The last time the Sun was at this spot in the Milky Way, the first dinosaurs were living on Earth.
The Local Bubble
The Sun is flying through a huge bubble of very thin, hot gas, about 1,000 light-years across. It was “swept out” a few million years ago by exploding stars (supernovae).
Where is it?
The Sun in the Milky Way belongs to the “The Milky Way” level of the Cosmic Zoom (field of view about 130,000 light-years). Our galaxy: a spiral of 100 to 400 billion stars. The Sun lies in the Orion Arm, 26,000 light-years from the centre. All the neighbouring stars from the previous level are inside the tiny dot at “Sun”.
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