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Where Is the Sun Located in the Milky Way?
- british_india 7y agoSol (our sun) is located between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms of the Milky Way spiral galaxy. Specifically, our home is located on the Orion Arm.
- selfsimilar 7y agoThe article is about how much above or below the plane, specifically the central plane of the galaxy we are. Spoiler: We're currently above (north) of the central galactic plane by tens of light years, and still traveling upwards, but it's cyclical and we'll be below the plane again in a few million years.
- samstave 7y agoI do not apologize for anything I’m about to say, as everyone should be educated on the following So what exactly is the trajectory of our solar system within this galaxy. What is it doing? EXPLAIN.
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- jedberg 7y agoI thought there was some recent paper that claimed our galaxy was not in fact a spiral galaxy but more spherical than we thought?
- enriquto 7y agothis is very surprising, considering that you can actually see it with your own eyes at night and it is not spherical at all. There are also countless panoramic photos of the whole thing, which always look more or less the same, and there is no way it can be spherical. See for example https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0932a/ https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0932a/
- irrational 7y agoOP might be thinking of the recent finding that the galaxy is not flat. https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/01/the-galaxy-is-not-flat-researchers-show-in-new-3d-model-of-the-milky-way/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/01/the-galaxy-is-not-flat-res...
- ianburrell 7y agoOr maybe the older discovery that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy. And may not have a pronounced central bulge.
- flatline 7y agoIt may well be, with the vast majority of the solar mass in the visible disk, and a handful of stars too dim to easily perceive forming a sphere. The Andromeda galaxy actually takes up a sizable portion if the earth’s sky in its full extent, we just don’t see it.
- rb808 7y agoFar out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
- journalctl 7y agoWouldn’t it be wondrous if the galaxy had plentiful intragalactic public transit and we don’t have access because we’re the planetary equivalent of the suburbs?
- TheRealSteel 7y agoThis is kind of a plot element in Mass Effect, but the humans are lucky enough to have a stop in our system.
- duncan-donuts 7y agoWhat do you mean the humans are lucky enough to have a stop in _our_ system?!
- paulsen 7y agoI think the Reapers may have arrived 167 years too early. Come on giant space Cthulhus, we haven't even discovered the Prothean Ruins in Mars yet!
- antisemiotic 7y agoDid New Horizons categorically rule out that there's something hidded inside Charon?
- undersuit 7y agoWe just need to build a station in the neighborhood: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613127/a-halo-drive-could-accelerate-interstellar-spacecraft-to-close-to-the-speed-of-light/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613127/a-halo-drive-could...
- mehrdadn 7y ago(Edited to correct/clarify) Out of curiosity, what is the galactic centripetal acceleration for the Milky Way that the Solar System is experiencing?
- phkahler 7y agoCan you clarify the question? Big G is a constant everywhere. I can't think of an equivalent for little g (9 81). If you chose to define something it would depend where you are.
- mehrdadn 7y agoI meant the galactic centripetal acceleration we're experiencing (which I saw as the analog of little g, but I guess it isn't really); sorry if that was confusing.
- bdamm 7y agoAs experienced on earth, as in during the day vs during the night? (I don’t know which side is facing galactic center but I’m sure it’s almost half the day one way and almost half the day the other way.)
- mehrdadn 7y agoI'd want it to be invariant to the time of day, so I guess as experienced by Earth's center? Or the sun's center. Just wanted a vague ballpark number, which someone already mentioned.
- lmilcin 7y agoYou can calculate it from the orbital speed and distance to the center of Galaxy. It comes to something like 2*10^-11 g
- mehrdadn 7y agoYeah I didn't have a chance when I posted the question, thanks! But wow that's small!
- strictnein 7y agoSlightly offtopic, but what extraordinarily well done alt text for the major images on this page. An example: > "The most current map of the Milky Way is shown in an artist’s representation. The Sun is directly below the galactic center, near the Orion Spur. The Scutum-Centaurus arms sweeps out to the right and above, going behind the center to the far side." They aren't quite following best practices with attribute usage, a screenreader may read both the alt and the title text for example and they're the same here, but to have the level of detail is really commendable.
- gmiller123456 7y agoOne of the local programming forums I frequented was also frequented by a blind guy who had an audio web device. His most frustrating experiences were sites that put the same thing in the title and the alt text. Unfortunately his device always had to read both, because so few websites actually followed the correct practices.
- gregknicholson 7y agoIt's also a really good example of how captions (this is a caption really, not exactly alt text) are context-dependent. The caption you mention continues: > The maser observed is almost directly opposite the Sun from the center in the S-C arm, 65,000 light years away. ...which makes no sense (there's no maser visible in the image or mentioned in the article) until you realise that this image was uploaded for another article and is being reused here. Evidently the website's content management system asks for caption text when uploading the image, rather than when selecting it for use in the article. The latter is the right way to do it.
- rb808 7y agoIts also a great time to replay the Contact Opening Scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWwhQB3TKXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWwhQB3TKXA which has to be one of the greatest scenes in history.
- thomk 7y agoHell yeah it is. Have an upvote.
- basementcat 7y agoRelated Abstruse Goose cartoon. https://abstrusegoose.com/163 https://abstrusegoose.com/163
- alarmingfox 7y agohttp://www.lightyear.fm http://www.lightyear.fm was inspired by the opening scene of Contact
- superfish 7y ago> But where is it vertically in the cake? Right in the center of that frosting layer, or off by a bit up or down? Did the author answer these questions? How far above the center of the cake is 55 light years?
- o09rdk 7y agoOff topic, but after my daughter was born I realized how sad and worried I was that she wouldn't be familiar with looking up at the sky on a clear night and seeing the Milky Way. Stuff like what's in this article is much more intuitive if it's part of your schema of the night sky; it's more difficult to appreciate when it's invisible. She's too young to appreciate it now when I point it out to her when we have the opportunity, and I worry that when she's old enough to appreciate it she'll be someplace she can't see it. For me it was a common thing up until I was a bit older, and now it's uncommon to be in the right place at the right time to see it. I wonder if the unlit night sky will become something like old-growth forests or other ecological sights that are long gone.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- grecy 7y agoGo to the Southern Hemisphere, the stars are still epic there. Story Time: I'm from Australia, but didn't got for almost 10 years. I lived in the Yukon, roamed all of Alaska, etc. etc. When I got to Australia after 10 years I walked outside in the middle of a city of 50,000 people and almost fell over the stars were so bright and colourful and (seemingly) close. They were so good, in fact, I took photos right there in the middle of that city that are better star photos than anything I have ever taken in Yukon/Alaska. If you're still in doubt, go to Australia!
- petschge 7y agoCan confirm that the Southern sky is great from my time in South Africa. We had a nicer view of the milky way during many braais in a small town backyard than I have seen in the Northern hemisphere (including back country camping in Yellowstone National Park). The combination of high elevation, dry air and little light pollution is great.
- devnulloverflow 7y agoSo yes, when I lived in the Europe one of the joys of coming back to Oz for holidays was that you can actually see stars. Even inside a big city, the nights tend to be clearer than in Europe and the light "pollution" more limited. That said, I've never seen the Milky Way. I probably could if I went out somewhere far from the city, but I can't remember ever actually seeing it, even when doing star-gazing at school camp.
- brownkonas 7y agoIs there any working directory of stars of the Milky Way with [x,y,z, t] coordinates ? a galaxy class coordinate system ?
- DennisP 7y agoI've seen databases of nearby stars, with just the 3D coords. Biggest I think had 100,000 stars. I don't think we have detailed data for the 100 million stars of the entire Milky Way.
- teamonkey 7y agoIf you're looking for a dataset, the GAIA project public data releases[1] are probably the best you'll find. [1] https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dr2 https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dr2
- JoeDaDude 7y agoI'm assuming something like the Gaia dataset was used to create this representation of stars near us? https://stars.chromeexperiments.com/ https://stars.chromeexperiments.com/
- DennisP 7y agoWhen I was a kid, in the back of a sci-fi magazine I saw a t-shirt advertised, with a picture of the galaxy. It had an arrow pointing towards the edge saying "You are here." And another arrow pointing to the center, saying "All the action is here."
- nerfhammer 7y agoso the Sun has both a vertical orbit as well as a horizontal one, with the vertical orbit in 1/4 phase with the horizontal orbit. interesting.
- Keysh 7y agoThe period of the vertical orbit is closer to 1/3 that of the planar orbit: roughly 70 million years, versus about 225 million years for the azimuthal ("horizontal") period. Since the periods aren't in an integer ratio (and you wouldn't generally expect them to be for galactic orbits), it's also not neatly closed like the schematic suggests.
- cloudking 7y agoIs the galactic center moving and if so how?