Orbiting the Galaxy it takes our Sun approximately 225 million years to make the trip around our Galaxy. This is sometimes called our “galactic year”. Since the Sun and the Earth first formed, about 20 galactic years have passed; we have been around the Galaxy 20 times.
How many times sun has orbited our galaxy
The Sun orbits the galactic center in a nearly circular orbit around the galactic center. The Sun makes one orbit around the Milky Way roughly once every 225 million years and is thought to have made this journey some 20 times since its earliest days as a protostar
On the largest scales, from great distances, the Milky Way would appear as a classic grand spiral galaxy, with four spiral arms. And our spot in the much ballyhooed suburbs of the galaxy’s disk isn’t a bad place to be. It’s far enough away from the chaotic galactic center, that it’s posited that things were quiet enough to allow for a solar system like ours to develop life at least once
But as the Sun moves through the disk of the galaxy, it also encounters giant molecular clouds in which new stars are forming. These clouds can also alter the Sun’s orbit. And whether or not such encounters might periodically trigger an influx of comets influx from our outer solar system is still debated
The Sun lies between two spiral arms Sagittarius and Perseus very close to a minor spur of the Milky Way known as the so-called Local Arm (or the Orion-Cygnus arm)
Where are we now?
Although recent estimates put our position as some 81 light-years above the midplane of the galaxy, in fact, Reid puts that figure at only 20 light years above the plane.
Blitz says that once the Sun hits a height of some 300 light years above the galactic plane, it will begin its descent back down through the midplane, out the other side and then back up again. And our star’s journey up, down and around will continue just as it has for the last 4.6 billion years.
Universe discoveries 