SUN HAS 230-MILLION-YEAR ORBIT IN MILKY WAY
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13 March 2024
The Moon revolves around our Earth, which in turn revoles around the Sun in 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes
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But do you now our Sun too orbits a massive object? It is located at the centre of our spiral galaxy, the Milky Way
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Called Sagittarius A*, it is a supermassive black hole that is mostly dormant and only occasionally absorbs gas or dust
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Along with our Sun, everything in our 13.6 billion-year-old galaxy orbits Sagittarius A*, including our solar system
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According to NASA, our solar system is moving with an average velocity of 720,000 kilometres per hour
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But even at this speed, it takes about 230 million years for the Sun to make one complete trip around the Milky Way
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NASA further said that the Sun rotates on its axis as it revolves around the galaxy
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Its spin has a tilt of 7.25 degrees with respect to the plane of the planets' orbits
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The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago in a giant, spinning cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula
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It also accounts for 99.8 per cent of our solar system's mass
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