Do nebulae move in space? Or do they stay in the same location?

Answer 1

Nebulas move, usually rotating around some core and rotating around something larger.

Nebulas are gas and dust clouds formed in space when a star explodes and when the particles from it start to collapse.

When gravity collects particles one side of the particle collection always has a little bit more than the other; this causes a rotation. As they collect and form clouds they continue to collapse and collect forming stars, planets, asteroids and comets. They also continue to rotate. Often they are part of a larger system, like a galaxy and they rotate around that as well.

As a system is forming the matter collects into a cloud, or nebula, before it forms a planet, star, comet or asteroid. At some point all stars run out of fuel and die. Large ones explode as nova or super nova and create huge dust and gas clouds called nebula. Eventually they collect, collapse and reform planets, stars, asteroids and comets; the cycle of creation, birth and rebirth goes on.

Of course there is a limit to the cycle because when a star like ours dies it collapse into a white dwarf and it doesn't explode into a nebula.

When a nebula forms it starts rotating and when a star explodes to create one it still has that rotation of the original star. Often stars are collected into groups called galaxies or clusters and they rotate around the core of those. In the case of many galaxies (like the Milky Way) a super massive black hole forms at the center of the galaxy and the rest of the galaxy rotates around it. For some reason these super massive black holes are not hungry and they don't suck their galaxy in.

Everything we have seen in space seems to be rotating. Not only rotating around its own axis, but around some other body as well. Our moon rotates around our planet, our planet rotates around its sun, the sun rotates around the core of its galaxy, and the galaxy itself is moving through space probably rotating around something else; maybe the universe in general. All of this is caused by gravity; the weakest yet the most undeniable and eventually the strongest force in the universe.

Answer 2

You can't stay in the same location in space. That would require that there is something like a special coordinate system, a rest frame, against which one can measure absolute motion. We know from relativity that there ain't no such thing.

Nebulae move relative to something just like everything else.

Answer 3

Nothing is static in space. Everything is moving. It's spinning, or it's revolving around something else, or it's just moving through space in a more or less straight line. But, where it was when I started typing... it's not there now.

However, if one were to take a very limited frame of reference... say a spot on Earth, one could say that the universe was spinning around the Earth. In that sense, the spot on Earth was stationary. They did just that for a few thousand years. But if one were to look at a slightly larger picture, say, a planet. The planet might be considered the center of everything, but the planet rotates... so it's not stationary.

Answer 4

Even though the nebulae are mainly quite tenuous (from our standpoint) their size makes them quite massive. They move around the center of the galaxy as do stars and other bodies (such as the globular clusters). More than that, however, many nebular bodies (especially those that were formed from supernovae and novae) expand, sometimes at high velocities.