Where Is the Sun Located in the Milky Way?

[rb808]

Far 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]

Wouldn’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?

[saghm]

This is probably a really silly question, but how do astronomers and the like define "west" in this case? I assume it must be useful to have some sort of reference orientation for the galaxy, but how is it defined?

[emmelaich]

Also the Galaxy song is funny and mostly accurate

http://www.montypython.net/scripts/galaxy.php

[nerfhammer]

digital watches are a pretty neat idea. they're vastly more accurate than mechanical watches while using incredibly little energy.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

It makes me sad how many of the replies here seem to have completely missed the reference. The fact that it's upvoted to the top gives me some hope, at least.

[strictnein]

Slightly 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.

[gregknicholson]

It'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.

[gmiller123456]

One 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.

[rb808]

Its also a great time to replay the Contact Opening Scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWwhQB3TKXA which has to be one of the greatest scenes in history.

[basementcat]

Related Abstruse Goose cartoon.

https://abstrusegoose.com/163

[alarmingfox]

http://www.lightyear.fm was inspired by the opening scene of Contact

[o09rdk]

Off 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.

[grecy]

Go 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!

[DennisP]

I never really saw it, until I was about 18 and spent a weekend in the Swiss Alps. That was in the mid-'80s. I'd seen it as a dim smear before, but not in its full glory. It looked like the pictures. I wished I could jump on a spaceship and just head out there.

[distantaidenn]

I'm from the inner city. Growing up, I always recalled just seeing a twinkle here and there in the night sky.

However, my mother's side of the family is from the deep south. I remember visiting relatives, and one time staring at the night sky. There were so many "things up there" I was both in awe and a little bit frightened.

[Razengan]

Indeed! It is that sight, the infinity of stars and space, that has probably been the greatest creative inspiration for humans ever since we gained sentience. The reminder and assurance that there is more to reality than the artifice of society and its petty concerns we've cocooned ourselves in.

With the stars gone from the skies in cities and their surroundings it is truly a dystopia, where humans will live their lives out thinking that our cities are all there is.

[JoeAltmaier]

I can see it most clear nights, walking out my back door. But I live in rural Iowa.

[DennisP]

When 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."

[mehrdadn]

(Edited to correct/clarify)

Out of curiosity, what is the galactic centripetal acceleration for the Milky Way that the Solar System is experiencing?

[jedberg]

I thought there was some recent paper that claimed our galaxy was not in fact a spiral galaxy but more spherical than we thought?

[brownkonas]

Is there any working directory of stars of the Milky Way with [x,y,z, t] coordinates ? a galaxy class coordinate system ?

[teamonkey]

If 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

[superfish]

> 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?

[nerfhammer]

so 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]

The 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]

Is the galactic center moving and if so how?

[bdamm]

Relative to other galaxies? Yes, in fact I believe there’s a galaxy or two on a collision course.

[british_india]

Sol (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]

The 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.