Monday 30 July 2018

astronomy - What angle does our Solar System make with The Milky Way?


Solar System resides in a plane, thanks to Conservation of Angular Momentum. The Milky Way is also a disc, not sphere.


What angle does our Solar System's plane (or, normal to plane) make with The Milky Way's plane (or, normal to plane)? Does our Solar System also resides in the same plane of our Galaxy, making the angle zero? If yes, why? If no, what exactly is the angle? Is it not constant? Any function describing the relationship?



Answer



The Sun is approximately in the plane of our Galaxy - see this Astronomy SE question. The ecliptic plane (plane of the solar system) and the Galactic plane (the plane of the disc of the Milky Way) are inclined to each other at an angle of 60.2 degrees.


This is a point you can confirm yourself by noting that the Milky Way does not follow the signs of the zodiac (which follow the ecliptic plane).



There is really no reason that there should be any alignment. Star formation is a turbulent, chaotic process. The evidence so far is that this leaves the angular momentum vectors of individual stars, their discs and ultimately their planetary systems, essentially randomised.


The question only asks "What angle does our Solar System's plane (or, normal to plane) make with The Milky Way's plane" -- to which 60 degrees is the answer. To completely specify the relative geometry of the planes we can ask what are the Galactic coordinates of the ecliptic north pole?


The ecliptic north pole (the pole of the Earth's orbit and the direction in which a normal to the ecliptic plane points) is currently at around RA$=18$h, Dec$=+67$ degrees in the constellation of Draco. In Galactic coordinates this is $l=97$ degrees, $b=+30$ degrees, compared with the normal to the Milky Way plane which is at $b=+90$ degrees (where $l=0$ points towards the Galactic centre and $b=0$ is roughly defines the plane of the Milky Way).


See also https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/28071/in-which-direction-does-the-ecliptic-plane-make-an-angle-of-63-degrees-with-gala


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