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Earth Location. Logarithmic representation of the universe centered on the Solar System. Celestial bodies on this graphic are clickable and shown with their sizes enlarged. Knowledge of the location of Earth has been shaped by 400 years of telescopic observations, and has expanded radically since the start of the 20th century.
Earth is rounded into an ellipsoid with a circumference of about 40,000 km. It is the densest planet in the Solar System. Of the four rocky planets, it is the largest and most massive. Earth is about eight light-minutes away from the Sun and orbits it, taking a year (about 365.25 days) to complete one revolution.
The Solar System's location in the Milky Way is a factor in the evolutionary history of life on Earth. Spiral arms are home to a far larger concentration of supernovae , gravitational instabilities, and radiation that could disrupt the Solar System, but since Earth stays in the Local Spur and therefore does not pass frequently through spiral ...
There are 7,026 known exoplanets, or planets outside the Solar System that orbit a star, as of July 24, 2024; only a small fraction of these are located in the vicinity of the Solar System. [3] Within 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years), there are 106 exoplanets listed as confirmed by the NASA Exoplanet Archive.
Local Interstellar Cloud – immediate galactic neighborhood of the Solar System. Alpha Centauri – star system nearest to the Solar System, at about 4.4 light years away; Solar System – star and planetary system where the Earth is located. Earth – the only planet known to have life.
In order to leave the Solar System, the probe needs to reach the local escape velocity. After leaving Earth, the Sun's escape velocity is 42.1 km/s. In order to reach this speed, it is highly advantageous to also use the orbital speed of the Earth around the Sun, which is 29.78 km/s.
Orion Arm – a spiral arm of the Milky Way. Solar System – the Sun and the objects that orbit it, including eight planets, the third planet closest to the Sun being Earth. Earth's orbit – path through which the Earth travels around the Sun. The average distance between the Earth and the Sun is 149.60 million kilometers (92.96 million miles).
Ignoring the influence of other Solar System bodies, Earth's orbit, also called Earth's revolution, is an ellipse with the Earth–Sun barycenter as one focus with a current eccentricity of 0.0167. Since this value is close to zero, the center of the orbit is relatively close to the center of the Sun (relative to the size of the orbit).