location of solar system in milky way galaxy
Milky Way The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 100,000[30] and 180,000 light-years (ly).[31] The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars.[32][33] There are probably at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way.[34][35] The Solar System is located within the disk, about 26,000 light-years from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of the Orion Arm, one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust. The stars in the inner ≈10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge. The very center is marked by an intense radio source, named Sagittarius A*, which is likely to be a supermassive black hole.
Milky Way Although the disk contains dust that obscures the view in some wavelengths, the halo component does not. Active star formation takes place in the disk (especially in the spiral arms, which represent areas of high density), but does not take place in the halo, as there is little gas cool enough to collapse into stars.[18] Open clusters are also located primarily in the disk.[133]
Corona Spectroscopy measurements indicate strong ionization and plasma temperature in excess of 1,000,000 kelvins,[1] much hotter than the surface of the Sun.
Supermassive black hole Astronomers are very confident that the Milky Way galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, 26,000 light-years from the Solar System, in a region called Sagittarius A*[19] because: