How are solar system and stars positioned are they side to side or up and down from each other?

Answer 1

• The solar system and stars are positioned in three dimensional positions; both side by side and up and down. Only God; the Creator; knows their number, locations, and lifetime.

• Another viewpoint: As far as we know, there isn't really "up and down" in space. These terms only have meaning in a particular context, such as here on the surface of Earth. Our solar system is in a disk shaped Galaxy of stars.
• You could define an "above" and "below" relative to the plane of that disk. In that case there are probably more stars in our Galaxy "side to side" of us than there are in the "up and down" direction.
• Also, the solar system is disk shaped. You could define "up and down" with

  respect to that disk. That disk is tilted with respect to the disk of the Galaxy.

  So, that gives you another possible answer.

  Finally there are billions of other galaxies.

  Relative to them, our Galaxy is in the middle of the "observed universe".

  Summary: It all depends on exactly what you mean and how you define

  things.

• Most multiple-star systems are organized in what is called a hierarchical system: the stars in the system can be divided into two smaller groups, each of which traverses a larger orbit around the system's center of mass. Each of these smaller groups must also be hierarchical, which means that they must be divided into smaller subgroups which themselves are hierarchical, and so on. Each level of the hierarchy can be treated as a Two-body problem by considering close pairs as if they were a single star. In these systems there is little interaction between the orbits and the stars' motion will continue to approximate stable Keplerian orbits around the system's center of mass, unlike the unstable Trapezia systems or the even more complex dynamics of the large number of stars in star clusters and galaxies.