Question: What is our Sun's rate of speed in relation to the center of our galaxy? Is our galaxy moving as well?

Asked by awesomekid to Edward on 22 Jun 2011.

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  1. Photo: Edward ShinEdward Shin
    answered on 22 Jun 2011:

    Oooh, nice question!

    Yes, the Sun is going round the centre of the galaxy at about 220 kilometre per second.

    When we talk about whether the galaxy is moving, things get complicated because the universe as a whole — space itself — is expanding and galaxies are generally moving away from each other. This general expanding sort of motion is called the “Hubble Flow”. Think of galaxies as logs floating in water that is flowing outwards. Individual galaxies can also be moving relative to the Hubble Flow (that is, swimming in the stream and not just floating along with it). Our galaxy is swimming at about 600 kilometre per second in the Hubble Flow.

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Comments

  1. Photo: awesomekidawesomekid
    commented on 22 Jun 2011:

    ok thank you so much that explains that 🙂

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