Does the Sun Move?

In ancient times, as people watched the sun move across the sky each day, they thought that the sun traveled around the earth.

Scientists later found out that the sun remains in one place while the earth and the other planets travel around it. But we know now that the sun moves too!

The sun is just one star in a huge group of stars called a galaxy. Our galaxy, called the Milky Way, is spinning around like a phonograph record. And the sun is traveling around the center of the galaxy at a speed of about 481,000 miles per hour. At that speed, the sun will travel around the center of the Milky Way once in about 225 million years.

The Milky Way itself is moving around the center of a group of galaxies, like a planet moving around the sun. And this group of galaxies may be traveling around the center of the universe. So the sun is really moving in two or three directions at once!

Like the sun, all other stars are traveling through space at high speeds, but they’re so far away that to us, they look like they never move!