“A Perilous Journey” –Our Solar System Has Completed 20 Orbits of the Milky Way Posted on Jun 26, 2021 in Astronomy, Milky Way Galaxy, Science In 1999 astronomers focusing on a star at the center of the Milky Way, measured precisely how long it takes the sun to complete one orbit (a galactic year) of our home galaxy: 226 million years, bobbing our fraught journey through the disc of the Milky Way, drifting through ghostly spiral arms and the darkness of dense nebulae, keeping a constant 30,000 light years between Earth and the violent galactic core. The last time the...