How long does it take the sun to travel around the Milky Way once?

Answer 1

It takes our sun roughly two hundred twenty million (220,000,000) years to orbit the galaxy. As the sun swings around, it passes back and forth through the plane of the galaxy, sort of like a sine wave.

Answer 2

This is from the Wikipedia article on the Sun: "The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of approximately 24,000 to 26,000 light years from the galactic center, moving generally in the direction of Cygnus and completing one revolution in about 225-250 million years (one Galactic year)."

Answer 3

Technically, it orbits the galactic center, not the galaxy itself, since it's part of the galaxy.

We're actually not quite sure how long it takes; we've only been making good observations for maybe one to one and a half millionths of an orbit... it's a little hard to extrapolate from that.

The best current estimates are somewhere between 200 and 250 million years.

Answer 4

It takes the sun approximately 225-250 million years to complete one orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This orbit is called a galactic year.