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The solar system consists of the planets and debris in orbit around our star. There are many solar systems in our galaxy, ours is but one of myriads (many thousands--possibly even billions). Each of the stars in our galaxy orbits about the center of the galaxy. Our sun requires some 200 million years to complete one orbit. To give some idea of the scale of the solar system, although earth whips around the sun once every year, Uranus (the furthest planet from the sun within our solar system) takes 84 years. Pluto takes 250 years to complete one revolution. While it would take light some 25 hours to cross from one section of the solar system to the other, it takes light 263 million hours (30 thousand years) to get from the sun to the center of the galaxy.

The Milky Way Galaxy is about a hundred thousand light years from side to side, and is one of some one hundred billion galaxies existing within our universe. Does the Milky Way Galaxy occupy a special place within the universe? No. Our galaxy is large, but otherwise fairly unremarkable. Our sister galaxy, Andromeda, is the biggest galaxy in our local group (about 20 galaxies). There are some galaxy WAY bigger than ours, containing trillions of stars.

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15y ago

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