The illustrations of the Solar System do not accurately represent the size or movement of the planets in the universe.
You may have seen many images of the Solar System, however, for illustrative purposes, these images often fail to depict the correct scale. Most exaggerate the size of the planets and place them much closer together than they actually are to help viewers visualize. In reality, when observing the Solar System, all celestial bodies appear too small, faint, and far apart to be seen with the naked eye.
In the actual universe, the Solar System resembles the night sky as seen from Earth. In fact, when we look up at the night sky, we are seeing a large portion of the Solar System.
The planets and their orbits to scale, with some orbits, including Earth’s, positioned relatively close to the Sun compared to the outer planets. (Image: Spacecentre).
If modeled to scale from an external perspective, the most easily observable object is the Sun, but it appears only as a small dot. Some larger planets look like stars, while others are too faint to see.
The Actual Motion of Earth and the Solar System
All planets rotate on their axes and orbit the Sun. A person on Earth may feel as though they are standing still, but from a cosmic perspective, this is not the case. Earth rotates on its axis at a speed of nearly 1700 km/h (or 0.5 km/s).
This number may sound large, but compared to the other movements of the Solar System and the galaxy that affect and create the velocity of entire planets in the universe, this is not significant.
Like the planets in the Solar System, Earth orbits the Sun much faster than it rotates on its own axis. The speed of Earth around the Sun is 30 km/s. After 365 days, Earth returns to its starting point, or more accurately, close to the starting point, because the Sun is also not stationary.
An accurate model of how planets orbit the Sun, then move through the galaxy in a different direction, while always remaining in the same plane. (Image: Rhys Taylor).
Stars, planets, gas clouds, dust particles, black holes, dark matter, and many other entities in the Milky Way galaxy are all in motion. From the observation point of Earth, approximately 25,000 light-years from the galactic center, the Sun orbits the galaxy in an elliptical path, completing one orbit every 220–250 million years.
The estimated speed of the Sun in this journey is about 200–220 km/s, a significant figure compared to both the rotational speed of Earth and the speed at which planets orbit the Sun, both of which are tilted at an angle relative to the plane of the Sun’s movement around the galaxy.
However, throughout this journey, the planets remain in the same plane without any phenomena of preceding or trailing behind, as commonly illustrated.
368 km/s is the speed at which humans are moving in the universe
The entire galaxy is not stationary; it moves due to the gravitational pull of matter in the universe. Within the local group, which consists of over 50 galaxies including the Milky Way, the speed of the Milky Way can be measured by comparing it with the largest galaxy in the group, Andromeda.
This galaxy is moving towards our Sun at a speed of 301 km/s. When accounting for the Sun’s movement within the Milky Way, Andromeda and the Milky Way are approaching each other at a speed of approximately 109 km/s.
At the largest scale, not only Earth and the Sun are moving, but the entire galaxy and local group are also in motion due to invisible forces. (Image: NASA/ESA).
The local group, although large and consisting of many galaxies, is not isolated. Other galaxies and surrounding clusters exert gravitational forces. Scientists estimate that these distant structures relative to Earth contribute an additional 300 km/s to our speed of movement.
When all these movements are combined – Earth’s rotation on its axis, Earth’s orbit around the Sun, the Sun’s movement around the galaxy, the Milky Way’s approach towards Andromeda, and the local group being attracted and pushed by surrounding regions – we arrive at the speed at which we are actually moving in the universe.
This total velocity reaches 368 km/s in a specific direction, plus or minus about 30 km/s, depending on the time of year and the direction Earth is rotating, according to Ethan Siegal, an astrophysicist at the University of Florida, who writes the blog “Starts With A Bang.”
Our planet and the planets orbiting the Sun lie on a plane, and the entire plane moves along an elliptical orbit through the galaxy.
Since every star similar to the Sun in the galaxy also moves in an elliptical path, the Solar System appears to periodically enter and exit the galactic plane, taking about 200-250 million years to complete one orbit around the galaxy.
