Our solar system is part of a galaxy called

The Milky Way Galaxy

Our Sun (a star) and all the planets around it are part of a galaxy known as the Milky Way Galaxy. A galaxy is a large group of stars, gas, and dust bound together by gravity. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The

What''s a galaxy? All you need to know

This is a recent discovery and it''s unknown how bars form in a galaxy. Our solar system is situated about 2/3 of the way out from the galactic center toward the periphery of the galaxy, embedded

What Is a Galaxy? | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids

The Short Answer: A galaxy is a huge collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars and their solar systems, all held together by gravity. We live on a planet called Earth that is

The Milky Way: Earth''s home galaxy | Astronomy

When we look out of the galaxy from the solar system, the disk is perturbed up a few hundred light-years, then down, then up, and then down again, starting about 6,500 light-years from the Sun and

News & Resources | Night Sky Network

Many people are not clear about the difference between our Solar System, our Milky Way Galaxy, and the Universe. Let''s look at the basics. Our Solar System consists of our star, the Sun, and its orbiting planets (including Earth), along with numerous moons, asteroids, comet material, rocks, and dust.Our Sun is just one star among the hundreds of billions of

In Depth | Our Solar System – NASA Solar System Exploration

Introduction. The planetary system we call home is located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; dwarf planets such as Pluto; dozens of moons; and millions of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.

Milky Way

OverviewStructureEtymology and mythologyAppearanceAstronomical historyAstrographySize and massContents

The Milky Way consists of a bar-shaped core region surrounded by a warped disk of gas, dust and stars. The mass distribution within the Milky Way closely resembles the type Sbc in the Hubble classification, which represents spiral galaxies with relatively loosely wound arms. Astronomers first began to conjecture that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, rather than an ordinary

Where is Earth in the Milky Way Galaxy?

Earth is in a relatively quieter part of the Milky Way Galaxy. Our solar system sits in one of the galaxy''s many spiral arms, called the Orion Arm or Orion Spur. Picture the Milky Way as a swirling disk with a bright center and long, winding arms. Earth is

What is the name of our Solar System?

It''s just called "the Solar System". (Plenty of places and objects have names like that; it''s no different from "the Arctic" or "the Moon" or "the Sun".) ("Sol system" is an invention of science fiction writers; it has no general use outside some science fiction contexts.

Is it true that our solar system belongs to another galaxy which

Also, the solar system is part of the Milky Way, and from everything we know about it, it has always been part of the milky way. It may get ejected in 3 billion years, but until then it shall remain part of the milky way. The second paragraph you quoted is total nonsense (above and beyond the regular nonsense of that entire site).

Our Sun: Facts

From our vantage point on Earth, the Sun may appear like an unchanging source of light and heat in the sky. But the Sun is a dynamic star, constantly changing and sending energy out into space. The science of studying the Sun and its influence throughout the solar system is called heliophysics. The Sun is []

Solar system | Definition, Planets, Diagram, Videos, & Facts

1 day ago· The solar system''s several billion comets are found mainly in two distinct reservoirs. The more-distant one, called the Oort cloud, is a spherical shell surrounding the solar system at a distance of approximately 50,000 astronomical units (AU)—more than 1,000 times the distance of Pluto''s orbit. The other reservoir, the Kuiper belt, is a thick disk-shaped zone whose main

In Depth | Our Solar System – NASA Solar System Exploration

The planetary system we call home is located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets

Planetary Systems

Planetary Systems Our solar system consists of the Sun, whose gravity keeps everything from flying apart, eight planets, hundreds of moons, and billions of smaller bodies – from comets and asteroids to meteoroids and tiny bits of ice and rock. Similarly, exoplanetary systems are groups of non-stellar objects circling stars other than the Sun, and []

Milky Way Galaxy

A galaxy is a huge bunch of stars clustered together in space. Our solar system—which includes the sun, Earth, and seven other planets—is part of this galaxy, called you guessed it the Milky Way. The Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars like our sun. (And like our sun, most of these stars have at least one planet

What Is a Galaxy? | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids

6 days ago· We live on a planet called Earth that is part of our solar system. But where is our solar system? It''s a small part of the Milky Way Galaxy. A galaxy is a huge collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars and their solar systems. A galaxy is held together by gravity. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, also has a supermassive black hole in the middle.

15.1 The Milky Way Galaxy | Beyond the solar system

Our own galaxy is called the Milky Way Galaxy. And our Solar System is a very small part of the Milky Way Galaxy. And our galaxy is only a very small part of the whole Universe. The Sun''s position in the Milky Way. If, instead of looking down on the Milky Way Galaxy, you looked at it from one side you would see that the Galaxy looks like

Solar System Exploration

Our solar system is in one of the Milky Way galaxy''s spiral arms called the Orion Spur. 5. A Long Way Around. Our solar system takes about 230 million years to orbit the galactic center. 6. Spiraling Through Space and the planets in our solar system. The mean temperature is the average temperature over the surface of the rocky planets

The Milky Way Galaxy

It''s called a spiral galaxy because if you could view it from the top or bottom, it would look like a spinning pinwheel. The Sun is located on one of the spiral arms, about 25,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy. Even if you could travel at the speed of light (300,000 kilometers, or 186,000 miles, per second), it would take you

Imagine the Universe!

Our solar system resides in the Milky Way galaxy, a spiral galaxy that is part of a group of galaxies called the Local Group. Tell me more about the Milky Way There are billions of galaxies in the Universe, but only three outside our Milky Way Galaxy can be seen without a telescope - the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds and the Andromeda galaxy.

The solar system: Facts about our cosmic neighborhood

An image of a massive solar flare (or coronal mass ejection) erupting out of the sun in 2017. (Image credit: NASA) The sun is at the center of the solar system and is its largest object