What is the average speed of a galaxy?

Answer 1

The Sun is about 30,000 lightyears from the center of the Milky Way and orbits around that center in about 200 million years, with an average speed of about 230 km/s or 800,000 km/h. The Sun has completed about 23 of those orbits so far.

Answer 2

That completely depends on which galaxy you're in while you measure it. There's

no single correct answer.

If you're in the same galaxy you're measuring, then it doesn't seem to be traveling

through space at all.

If you're in a different galaxy, then it all depends on the relative motion of the two

of them with respect to each other.

There's no single correct answer. Physicists in ten different galaxies measuring the

speed of "Galaxy-Q" measure ten different speeds, and they're all correct.

Answer 3

The sun does not orbit the galaxy. The sun is in the galaxy.

It is also possible that the sun, for all intents and purposes, is relatively 'static' within the galaxy, continually maintaining its 'stationary' position, i.e. relative to the other stars/suns in the galaxy.

Of course, the galaxy itself may be spinning, taking the sun around with it.

However! It is extremely difficult from a human standpoint to measure the direction, speed and extent of the spin, especially as there doesn't seem to be any stationary fixed point in the universe against which we can measure our galaxy's spinning movement.

Even so, and with reference to other galaxies, it has been estimated that our planetary system, (including the sun) actually makes one orbit around our Milky Way galaxy once every 200-250 million years! If this is so, then the sun travels about 1/225,000,000 th's of an orbit around the galaxy every year.

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Answer 4

The speed of a galaxy. That's a tough question. The speed relative to what?

Everything in the universe is moving. This much we can tell; but the thing we do not know - the thing we CANNOT know - is what the "stationary center point" of the universe is, or even if this concept makes any sense. Are we moving? Is Andromeda moving? All we know is that most things in the universe are moving away from us, and the further away it is, the faster we are moving apart.

Andromeda, on the other hand, is moving TOWARD us; in fact, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy will probably collide in about 3 billion years.

Answer 5

The speed of the galaxy is about 600 km/s in the direction of the Centaurus Supercluster.

Answer 6

An estimate is about 1,083,477,600,000,000,000 miles. About 1 quintillion miles.

Answer 7

This question is impossible to answer, since the galaxy is expanding at different rates, and never stops.

Answer 8

Velocity with respect to what? It only makes sense to indicate a velocity in relation to some other object. More details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way#Velocity

Answer 9

You can calculate this yourself, if i say it moves 219 meters per second in the milkway. :)

Answer 10

Your speed of travel has no effect on the size of the galaxy.