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The Milky Way [c] is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
Diagram of the Milky Way, with galactic features and the relative position of the Solar System labelled. The Solar System is located in the Milky Way , a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of about 100,000 light-years containing more than 100 billion stars. [268]
Alpha Centauri ( α Centauri, α Cen, or Alpha Cen) is a triple star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus. It consists of three stars: Rigil Kentaurus ( α Centauri A ), Toliman ( α Centauri B ), and Proxima Centauri ( α Centauri C ). [14] Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun at 4.2465 light-years (1.3020 pc ).
The Solar System travels alone through the Milky Way in a circular orbit approximately 30,000 light years from the Galactic Center. Its speed is about 220 km/s. Its speed is about 220 km/s. The period required for the Solar System to complete one revolution around the Galactic Center, the galactic year , is in the range of 220–250 million years.
The rotation curve of a disc galaxy (also called a velocity curve) is a plot of the orbital speeds of visible stars or gas in that galaxy versus their radial distance from that galaxy's centre. It is typically rendered graphically as a plot, and the data observed from each side of a spiral galaxy are generally asymmetric, so that data from each ...
Galactic quadrant. Longitudinal lines of the galactic coordinate system. A galactic quadrant, or quadrant of the Galaxy, is one of four circular sectors in the division of the Milky Way Galaxy. Numbered quadrants and sectors of constellations. Quadrants as starcharts, with most prominent stars marked.
Bottom: Logarithmic scale of the Solar System and Voyager 1 's position.. The heliosphere is the magnetosphere, astrosphere, and outermost atmospheric layer of the Sun. It takes the shape of a vast, tailed bubble-like region of space. In plasma physics terms, it is the cavity formed by the Sun in the surrounding interstellar medium.
Milky Way subgroup; Milky Way; Orion–Cygnus Arm; Gould Belt; Local Bubble; Local Interstellar Cloud – immediate galactic neighborhood of the Solar System. Alpha Centauri – star system nearest to the Solar System, at about 4.4 light years away; Solar System – star and planetary system where the Earth is located. Earth – the only planet ...