Orbit and Rotation
The Sun, and everything that orbits it, is located in the Milky Way galaxy. More specifically, our Sun is in a spiral arm called the Orion Spur that extends outward from the Sagittarius arm. From there, the Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy, bringing the planets, asteroids, comets, and other objects along with it. Our solar system is moving at an average velocity of 450,000 miles per hour (720,000 kilometers per hour). But even at this speed, it takes us about 230 million years to make one complete orbit around the Milky Way.
The Sun rotates as it orbits the center of the Milky Way. Its spin has an axial tilt of 7.25 degrees with respect to the plane of the planets’ orbits. Since the Sun is not a solid body, different parts of the Sun rotate at different rates. At the equator, the Sun spins around once about every 25 Earth days, but at its poles, the Sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.
Moons
The Sun and other stars don’t have moons; instead, they have planets and their moons, along with asteroids, comets, and other objects.
Formation
The Sun and the rest of the solar system formed from a giant, rotating cloud of gas and dust called a solar nebula about 4.5 billion years ago. As the nebula collapsed because of its overwhelming gravity, it spun faster and flattened into a disk. Most of the material was pulled toward the center to form our Sun, which accounts for 99.8% of the mass of the entire solar system.
Like all stars, the Sun will someday run out of energy. When the Sun starts to die, it will swell so big that it will engulf Mercury and Venus and maybe even Earth. Scientists predict the Sun is a little less than halfway through its lifetime and will last another 6.5 billion years before it shrinks down to a white dwarf.