Part 4/11:
This means that Polaris is incredibly distant compared to our solar system, and its size and distance influence how we perceive its position over time.
Relative Velocities and the Apparent Stationarity of Stars
Given these scales, let's consider Earth's motion:
The solar system orbits the Milky Way's center at about 500,000 miles per hour (roughly 140 miles per second), completing a revolution every 225-250 million years.
While this speed seems massive, the distances to stars like Polaris are so vast that movement over a single year results in minuscule shifts in their apparent position—about 0.0001 degrees.