Galactic Awareness

The Milky Way Galaxy is the home of our Solar System together with at least 200 billion other stars and their planets. It also hosts thousands of clusters and nebulae. As a galaxy, the Milky Way is a giant, its mass is estimated as between 750 billion and one trillion solar masses, and its diameter is about 100,000 light years. Our solar system is situated within the outer regions of this galaxy, about 28,000 light years from the Galactic Center. It is situated within a smaller spiral arm, called the 'Orion Arm' of the Galaxy. The Orian Arm is a connection between the inner and outer next more massive arms, the 'Sagittarius Arm' and the 'Perseus Arm'. The galactic center harbors a compact object of very large mass (named Sagittarius A*). A supermassive black hole. Most galaxies are believed to have a supermassive black hole at their center.

It takes the Solar System about 225–250 million years to complete one orbit of the galaxy (a galactic year), so it is thought to have completed 20–25 orbits during the lifetime of the Sun and 1/1250th of a revolution since the origin of humans. The orbital speed of the Solar System about the center of the Galaxy is approximately 220 km/s. At this speed, it takes around 1400 years for the Solar System to travel a distance of 1 light-year.

The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are a binary system of giant spiral galaxies.The Milky Way is orbited by two smaller galaxies and a number of dwarf galaxies. In January 2006, observation of stars rising close to perpendicular to the plane of the spiral arms of the Galaxy have led to the proposition that a Dwarf Galaxy may be currently merging with the Milky Way.

Our Milky Way Galaxy is only one of billions of Galaxies in the observable Universe.

Since 1976, the Winter Solstice Sunrise has been occuring within orb of conjunction to Galactic Centre. The Winter Solstice of 2012 marks the closest accuracy that this conjunction will reach. These 30+ years have seen an unprecedented acceleration of transformation and evolution. Collectively we have moved from an industrial culture to an information culture. This specific alignment to Galactic Centre only occurs every 26,000 years in relation to the Procession of the Equinoxs'. The symbol below is the Mayan 'Hunab Ku'. This symbol represents Galactic Centre, or, 'The Black Sun'. The Mayan Long Count ends at the Winter Solstice 2012.

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