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The Sun's path through the galaxy.
We were taught circles. Seen from the galaxy, they are corkscrews.
Replay journey Follow Earth Outer worlds
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LIVE SIMULATION
An illustration of planetary orbits carried along by the Sun's motion. The planet data and model explanation are available in About this model.
Eight planets orbit the Sun while it travels around the Milky Way. Colored trails show their previous positions over the selected span. This is an illustrative model, with enlarged planets, expanded orbital distances and compressed forward travel.
SAGITTARIUS A* Galactic centre · enlarged, not to scale
Direction and tilt are real · the galaxy, the arc and planet spacing are not to scale.
Perspective
Side view
Top view Along the trail
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↺
⛶
THE MILKY WAY Galactic context · separate scale
VISIBLE HISTORY 165 years
SUN'S TRAVEL IN THIS SPAN 1.20 trillion km ≈ 8,006 AU
SHARE OF ONE GALACTIC ORBIT 0.000072 %
828,000 km/h ⟶
Speed of the Sun and its planets around the galactic centre · NASA
Illustrative scales How to read this
The interactive drawing is unavailable in this browser. Open "About this model" for the planetary data and an explanation.
Enable JavaScript to explore the simulation. Planets orbit the Sun as the whole system travels around the Milky Way. This drawing uses illustrative scales.
YOUR FLIGHT DECK ×
Scene presentation Galactic journey Orbit explorer
Choose your reference frame One system. Two ways to see its motion.
↗ Through the galaxyReveal the winding trails ◎ With the SunSee the familiar orbits
Leave a trail 165 years
5 years A Neptune year ≈ 165
Full history Build from start
The selected years before the current instant.
Explore the planets 8 visible Fine-tune the scene ⓘ They orbit and travel.
About this model Reset experiment
PLAYBACK SPEED 0.25 years / sec 1 year / sec 2 years / sec 5 years / sec 10 years / sec
ORBITLAB / SOLAR DRIFT Pause Exit cinema Esc
The orbit is real.The perspective changes. Planets orbit the Sun. The entire solar system also moves around the centre of the Milky Way. Add these motions together and each planet's closed orbit opens into a corkscrew through space.
Checking the viral claim
"Planets don't orbit, they surf" · what holds up Claim Verdict What the sources say
The Sun moves at 828,000 km/h Correct NASA gives about 828,000 km/h (230 km/s) for the solar system's orbit of the galactic centre. Other NASA pages round it to 720,000 km/h; the value is measured to within roughly ten per cent. It is sprinting towards Sagittarius A* Not correct The Sun moves around Sagittarius A*, at right angles to the direction of the black hole, about 26,000 to 27,000 light-years away. One lap takes about 230 million years. Planets don't orbit; they trail behind the Sun Not correct They orbit exactly as taught. Their plane is tilted about 60° to the Sun's path, so every planet spends half of each orbit ahead of the Sun. Nothing is dragged in a wake. Reality is a corkscrew Correct, in one frame Measured against the galaxy the paths are helices. Measured against the Sun they are ellipses. Both descriptions are true; neither is more "real". A 165-year trail Correct One Neptune year is 164.8 Earth years. In that time the Sun covers about 1.2 trillion km (8,000 AU), which is 0.00007% of one galactic orbit.
The galactic journey This view puts the Sun on a curved arc of its orbit around Sagittarius A*, turning clockwise as seen from galactic north, as the Milky Way does. The Sun also rises and sinks through the galactic plane about once every 60 million years; the drop lines show that bob, keeping its true ratio to the orbit. The planets circle in a plane tilted 60° to the direction of travel, taken from the IAU definition of galactic coordinates.
Three things are staged so that the picture can be read. The arc swept in 165 years is enlarged about 400,000 times; drawn to scale it would be a straight line shorter than a pixel. The planets' rings are evenly spaced rather than to scale, and the four inner planets are slowed so their coils can be told apart. The black hole and the Sun are enlarged enormously. The 165-year timeline is a model interval, not a dated ephemeris.
Choose Orbit explorer for the fixed Keplerian orbital periods. The speed and distance readings in both presentations use the 230 km/s value independently of the drawing.
What the orbit explorer changes Orbital shapes use fixed J2000 Keplerian elements and their orbital periods. The orientation uses the J2000 ecliptic-to-galactic rotation. To make the paths readable, orbital distances are expanded with a square-root scale, planet sizes are enlarged, and forward travel is compressed 32 times at the default visual stretch. Changing the stretch changes only the drawing. The starfield and Milky Way backdrop are schematic. The galaxy and local trails use separate scales; their placement is a visual composition, not a map of our actual location.
The timeline is elapsed model time, not a dated ephemeris. Full history shows the selected years before the current instant. Build from start begins with no history and accumulates it from year zero, up to the chosen trail length. The distance readout is the Sun's approximate travel during the visible history, not a planet's curved path length. The orbit explorer assumes straight, uniform galactic travel at 230 km/s (828,000 km/h), an approximate value. It does not simulate galactic gravity or interactions between planets.
Physical orbital periods · Orbit explorer Planet Earth years Physical turns in 165 years
Explore the sources: NASA · Our solar system ↗ NASA · Sun facts ↗ ESO · Sagittarius A* ↗ Nature 316, 706 · The Sun's vertical motion ↗ JPL · Approximate planetary positions ↗ UC Observatories · Galactic motion ↗
With the scene focused:
Arrow keys Rotate the view + / − Zoom in / out Space Play / pause [ / ] Step one year back / forward Home Reset the camera C / Escape Enter / leave cinema view Use Tab to reach every control. Sliders support the arrow keys. Reduced-motion preferences start the simulation paused and disable automatic camera motion. Cinema view keeps playback and exit controls available.