Cultural Retreat

   The Sun is located on the inner edge of a spiral arm. The center, or nucleus, of the galaxy is about 27,000 light-years distant, in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.     Earth speed: 29,78  km/s     Solar System speed: 220 km/s    Milky Way speed relative to CMB rest frame:        552 km/s [Cosmic microwave background radiation]    All the stars in the galaxy move in orbits around its center. The Sun takes about 225-250 million years to complete an orbit. The orbits of most of these stars are nearly circular and are nearly in the same direction.    The distance between the Sun and Earth is roughly 93 million miles (150 million kilometers, 1 AU). Light travels through space at about 186,282 miles (299,792 kilometers) per second, so a ray of sunlight takes only about 8 minutes to reach Earth. Light from other stars takes much longer to reach Earth; light from the next nearest star, Proxima Centauri, takes more than four years to arrive.    Whitish