If the Earth travels around the Sun, is the Sun stationary? How would we know if it were orbiting something?

Answer 1

The sun is stationary relative to our solar system, but not to the universe. All the planets in our system orbit the sun, while our entire system orbits within the local universe around a central universal mass. So, we DO know that the sun and our system is in fact orbiting something.

How do we know this? We know this through astronomical telescopes and calculations of red shift phenomena.

Edwin Hubble was able to use conventional telescopes of his era to discover that our solar system is part of the milky way, which itself is a gigantic collection of stars and planets that are orbiting around a central mass. He was also the first astronomer to verify that not only is the universe expanding, but that the expansion is accelerating!

We know all this through a combination of observational data collected from different types of telescopes that see in different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.

All of the data is in agreement about certain things. We know for certain that the universe started with a sudden dramatic expansion called "the big bang" 13.7 billion years ago.

Answer 2

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Yes, but it's not a useful way of looking at things because the math is so complicated. But you can pick any point as the inertial frame of reference and say everything moves around it. You could say you yourself are stationary and the earth and sun revolve around you, occasionally lining up to block out the sun and make it nighttime. And the earth keeps moving around so much that sometimes you have to move your feet around to stay in the same spot so the ground doesn't drag you with it. Even using a conventional heliocentric system, the earth still doesn't technically revolve around the sun. The earth and sun both revolve around their center of mass (which is inside the sun, but not at the center, so the sun is revolving a bit in response to the earth.) There is no defined inertial reference frame of the universe, that means you're free to choose any inertial frame you want and say that the frame you chose is stationary and all 'apparent' motion viewed from that frame is the true motion. So it's perfectly legitimate to assume the earth is stationary and the sun orbits the earth. I like this as an example of how theories in science aren't really 'right or wrong' just 'more or less useful.' The geocentric theory is simply less useful than the heliocentric theory. Others here are right in saying that if you viewed the solar system from the outside you would see the earth go around the sun, not vice versa (you knew that already) but these people are missing the point of the question. If we choose the earth as the inertial reference frame, then the sun is orbiting the earth, and it only APPEARS to be the other way around when viewed from outside because those other stars are ALSO orbiting the earth.

Answer 3

The Sun is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

So the Moon orbits Earth while Earth orbits the Sun while the Sun orbits the galaxy.

We know the Sun is moving by measuring the speeds of stars around the Sun. Some stars are moving toward the Sun and some are moving away. Some are moving sideways at various speeds. This takes careful measurement s because the gigantic distances mean that even at high speed the starts hardly shift their position at all in times as short as a human lifetime. But careful measurement and record keeping can build up a pattern of motions that we can use to infer the motion of the Sun in the galaxy.

Answer 4

The Sun orbits around the center of gravity of the solar system. This point is called the "barycenter". It is mostly the center of mass of the Sun and Jupiter, plus a bit from Saturn and the other planets (plus some tiny corrections from General Relativity).

We know this because the equations for the motions of the Sun and planets are much simpler that way. These equations fit the observations very closely.

In turn, the barycenter orbits around the milky way, our galaxy. This has been figured out by observing the motions of the stars in the galaxy, and how we move relative to them. This has been used to create a gravity map of the galaxy.

Answer 5

Its true that the Earth orbits around the Sun. But since when is the Sun stationary? The Sun, just like the other stars in our galaxy, is in turn orbiting the centre of our galaxy, which is the milky way. And our milky way, is in turn orbiting some other huge, unknown universal stuff. It has already been proven so there you go...

Answer 6

Sun Stationary

Answer 7

The Sun is orbiting something.
It is orbiting the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Sun is located on one of the spiral arms that form sort
of a disk which comprises the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Sun is located about 2/3 of the distance along one of
those arms from the center hub of our Galaxy which is 1500 Light Years in diameter and 1.5 light years thick.
The Sun makes one revolution around the hub of our Galaxy every 200 million years. It should be noted that the central portions of our galaxy spin around the hub faster than the fringe areas of the disk, however. That gives rise to the spiral configuration of the gathering of stars we call arms within our Galaxy.

Almost all of the stars that you see on a clear night with the unaided eye are within our Milky Way Galaxy.

Answer 8

No, the Sun is orbiting around the galaxy, and the galaxy is moving as well, at least relative to the other galaxies around it. There's no absolute reference frame in space, so we usually measure everything else's motion relative to our own somehow. We figured out that we're orbiting the Sun because it's MUCH easier to explain the physics of small bodies orbiting a large one than to explain how the Sun might be orbiting us. Look up Ptolemy vs Copernicus.

Answer 9

The Sun moves relative to the center of mass of the Milky Way. The Earth orbits the Sun relative to the Sun's barry center. Hence, The Earth, due to the Sun's motion traces a cyclodal path motion relative to our Galaxy's barrycenter.The relative motion of the Earth relative to the Galaxy is about 250 km per seconds, whereas the velocity of the Earth's Orbit around the Sun is only 29.6 kilometers per second.
Therefore ,we are moving in Space close to one million kilometer every hour.

If the Sun's frame of reference was stationary (absolute =no motion);The Earth would trace an eliptical path around the Sun as it orbits it on the ecliptic. This is called relative motion to that particular frame of reference. However ; since the Sun is not stationary ,then the Earth on the ecliptic , moving relative to the Galaxy forms,therefore, a cycloidal motion.

If we were not looking at the stars at night , and as per Galileo's Principle of Relativity would would not see ourselves moving in Space.

The Galaxies themselves, including the Milky way ,are also moving Relative to the Universal radius of our Creator's Universe. Their motion as observed by wave dispersion of light relative to the earth appears to be at much Greater speed. However relative to the Center of the Universe the Orbital motion of the Galaxies are so slow that they appear to be standing still.
The period of a Galaxy at the outer radius vector of the Universe would take very roughly aprox. 3 x10^18 seconds to orbit the Barry center of the Universe.

Answer 10

The sun is stationary in relation to the earth only , but the whole solar suystem is moving around the center of the Milky way Glaxy along with the arm of the galaxy in which it is located.since her whole galxy is rotating and the size of the galaxy is astoundingly and inconceivably large , the movement appears tobe very slow and difficult to observe .it s like the moemt of the earth that we are unable to feel ,thought it s around 67000 around the sun and mopre than a thousand miles per hour around its own axis ..We can not feel our orbit around the sun withut an external frame of reference of other stars in space as the sun would appear stationary in relatioin to the earth.