Even the most General observations of the sky can be concluded that the Sun is among the many stars, the greatest number of which are located in the direction of the milky Way. Apart from its bright band of stars much less. Stars of the milky Way and visible separately form a single star system.

The basis of our knowledge about the structure of our star system and the position of the stars in it laid Century Ya Struve. Currently, thanks to the works of many astronomers, in particular, Russian scientists - PP Steamed and others, it is known that this ambitious system - Galaxy (which translated from Greek means "the milky Way") - contains about 150 mlros.

In its form Galaxy is a lentils, or it can be likened to two plates, folded together. What would all this star system from a very large distance? On the one hand we would have seen bright stripes with a slight bulge in the middle. If we looked at this star system from a different direction (view flat), you would have seen the light spot with rounded contours, brighter toward the center.

The center is the core of the Galaxy. The main mass of the stars that form the Galaxy, located near its main plane. The further away from this plane, and the farther from the center of the Galaxy, the less are the stars.

Stars in our Galaxy are grouped in places relatively close clusters. The brightest and most massive stars, and most nebulae are located near the plane, which we discussed above. Our solar system is located near this plane, but very far from the center of the Galaxy. All stars in the Galaxy are moving around a common center of gravity, which, however, there is a gigantic sun. This center of gravity is formed by a huge ball of stars in the core of the Galaxy. Around it and made the movement of all the stars, including the Sun.

Towards the center of the Galaxy, the space between stars is filled with numerous dark nebulae. Light is very distant stars is absorbed this interstellar medium and significantly weakened. If these dark nebulae but it was, the Central region of the Galaxy shone would be extremely bright.

Using special methods of photographing these areas heaven in invisible infrared, Russian scientists have photographed a giant star cloud, forming the Central thickening in the Galaxy - its core.

Our solar system describes around the Galaxy huge way with the speed of about 250 km/sec with a period of 185 million years.

What is the position of our solar system in the Galaxy?

Research with complete certainty showed that the space occupied by the Sun among the stars in the Galaxy, rather modest: the Sun is an ordinary star among tens of billions of him like that; it is twice as far from the Galactic center than from its territory.

The Central region of the Galaxy visible to us in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and the distance from us to those areas about 23 thousand light years. From one same edge of the Galaxy to another beam of light passes almost 85 thousand light years. This is the diameter of the Galaxy is our star system.