3 Questions
How far away is the sun from the Milky Way's center?
26,000 light-years
What was the cloud of dust and gas that collapsed to form the sun called?
A nebula
What do scientists observe around distant young cousins of the sun?
Planets
Study Notes
- The sun is a star and resides some 26,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center.
- Every 230 million years, the sun makes one orbit around the Milky Way's center.
- The sun formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, when a cloud of dust and gas called a nebula collapsed under its own gravity.
- As it did, the cloud spun and flattened into a disk, with our sun forming at its center.
- The disk's outskirts later accreted into our solar system, including Earth and the other planets.
- Scientists have even managed to see these planet-birthing disks around our sun's distant young cousins.
Explore the fascinating formation of the sun and our solar system, from the collapse of a nebula into a disk to the accretion of planets. Learn about the sun's orbit around the Milky Way's center and the observation of planet-birthing disks around young stars.
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