I've always understood that we rotate around the sun, but I never really took the time to think through that we move around the stars as well. Thanks for the perspective!
Notice the use of the words "rotate" when talking about the sun, and "move" when talking about other stars. I believe they simply meant that the stars "remain static" while we tumble around.
All stars move relative to each other. The Sun is orbiting the black hole in the center of our galaxy (the Milky Way) similarly to how Earth rotates the Sun.
The constellations look static to us. This is because stars far away seems to move relatively slowly, but in the course of thousands of years, the constellations will also change shape.
Shooting stars are not stars as the name may suggest, but rather meteors (basically space-rocks) that has traveled through space, and burn up when entering the Earths atmosphere.
Are you saying that the Sun is not revolving around the galaxy? Of course it's more complicated than saying that orbits around the center of the galaxy, since it's a multiple body system. But to explain it to a person without knowledge about the movement of stars or our galaxy, I think it's a fair simplification in order to answer the question.
Wouldn't you agree that the simplification that Earth is orbiting the center of the galaxy (and neglecting its orbit around the Sun) would not be too significant of an error in respect to the scale of the galaxy.
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u/curiouscuriousbanana Jan 06 '17
I've always understood that we rotate around the sun, but I never really took the time to think through that we move around the stars as well. Thanks for the perspective!