how do we know the Sun is not at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy?

Question

how do we know the Sun is not at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy?

Answer 1

god made the earth the center.... jeez

Answer 2

The Milky way apppears as a band of sunshine around the sky. The airplane of the Earth's orbit around the solar is an imaginary line which also is going everywhere in the sky and is vulnerable at an perspective of about 60 stages to the airplane of the Milky way. hence, because the Earth revolves around the solar, two times a 365 days the solar seems, as considered from Earth, to spend some days passing in the front of this band of stars everyday because the Milky way. that is the alignment Earth - solar - Milky way it really is what the 2012 doomsayers have become enthusiastic about. although, their argument overlooks a number of important factors: a million) between the factors the position the solar seems in the front of the Milky way isn't contained in the route of the centre of the Milky way, yet is about 6 stages far flung from it. 2) because the Earth orbits the solar once a 365 days, this "alignment" takes position each and every 365 days and there is no longer something remotely unusual about it. 3) Astrologers and others opt for to make a large deal about "alignments" yet in genuine actual words, they don't mean a element. gadgets' mutual gravitational effect relies upon on their genuine distances from one yet another, no longer even if or not they look in a line as considered from a particular factor of view. all of it comes right down to a gaggle of frauds and charlatans attempting to make a large element out of no longer something and mutually, no longer extremely understanding what they are speaking about.

Answer 3

If our sun were at the center of the Milky Way the paths of the other stars we know to be in the Milky Way would appear much differently. In other words, pretty much the way we know the Earth is not the center of our solar system.

Answer 4

We measure dimensions of the galaxy such as the disk, bulge and halo using optical, infrared, and radio observations, especially the radio emission line of atomic hydrogen. From these we know that the density of stars and gas clouds goes down steeply as you move away from the center of the galaxy where the disk is 30 kilo parsec "thick", but the are around our Sun is only about 300 parsecs, so we know the Sun is no where near the center of the galaxy.

Answer 5

The same way we know the Earth isn't in the middle of the Solay System. Everything in the Milky Way rotates around a center point.

Answer 6

If the sun was at (or even near) the centre of the galaxy, the Milky Way would appear much the same in all directions in the night sky.

But it doesn't: there is a pronounced bulge in one direction (toward Sagittarius), and it's thinner in the opposite direction (toward Taurus). This suggests we're off to one side. Other observations (telescopes, radio astronomy) confirm this observation.

Answer 7

Back in 1917, Harlow Shapley used globular clusters to find the center of the Milky Way for the first time. There's a pretty pronounced concentration of globular clusters in that direction, and the estimate turned out to be pretty good. There's also kind of a brighter patch in the Milky Way in that direction.

Today, we can see the center directly. We can see the gamma rays coming from the super-massive black hole, we can map out the density of neutral hydrogen gas, and we can see the stars orbiting the central black hole directly.

Answer 8

11 answers so far, and only one, by Canopus, is correct. The location of the Sun in the Milky Way was in fact determined in 1917 by the young Harlow Shapley, based on the distribution of globular clusters. I know this because one of the labs in the astrophysics course I took many years ago replicated Shapley's research. Shapley's brilliant pioneering work was confirmed decades later by radio astronomy, mapping the distribution of hydrogen in the galaxy.

Answer 9

Yes, it was the astronomer Harlow Shapley who was the first to prove that the Earth was not located at the centre of our galaxy. Shapley took part in a very famous debate with fellow astronomer Heber Cutris early in the twentieth century. The debate itself went beyond establishing Earth's position in the galaxy - they were debating the extent of the universe itself. The result of the debate proved truly mind-blowing and yet both astronomers came away having proved parts of their own argument correct.

I won't go into detail, but please check out my link below for a very interesting breakdown of "The Great Debate". I think anyone who is interested in astronomy should read it.

Answer 10

Looking at other galaxies, we see that all galaxies like ours are round.
Looking at the sky, we see that there are more stars on one side of us than the other, so we must be off-centre.



Plus, there's a giant black hole at the centre of the galaxy, and we don't appear to be in that.

Answer 11

measurements and triangulation of star and planets. We are actually on the outer end of one arm of our spiral galaxy. It may be that life cannot exist unless it is this distance from the center of its galaxy?