http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way#Sun.27s_location_and_neighborhood

Sun's location and neighborhood

The Sun (and therefore the Earth and the Solar System) may be found close to the inner rim of the Galaxy's Orion Arm, in the Local Fluff inside the Local Bubble, and in the Gould Belt, at a distance of 8.33 ± 0.35 kiloparsecs (27,200 ± 1,100 ly) from the Galactic Center.[7][43][84] The Sun is currently 5–30 parsecs (16–98 ly) from the central plane of the Galactic disk.[85] The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Perseus Arm, is about 6,500 light-years (2.0 kpc).[86] The Sun, and thus the Solar System, is found in the Galactic habitable zone.

There are about 208 stars brighter than absolute magnitude 8.5 within a sphere with a radius of 15 parsecs (49 ly) from the Sun, giving a density of 0.0147 such stars per cubic parsec, or 0.000424 per cubic light-year (from List of nearest bright stars). On the other hand, there are 64 known stars (of any magnitude, not counting 4 brown dwarfs) within 5 parsecs (16 ly) of the Sun, giving a density of 0.122 stars per cubic parsec, or 0.00352 per cubic light-year (from List of nearest stars), illustrating the fact that most stars are less bright than absolute magnitude 8.5.[citation needed][original research?]

The Apex of the Sun's Way, or the solar apex, is the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way. The general direction of the Sun's Galactic motion is towards the star Vega near the constellation of Hercules, at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center. The Sun's orbit around the Galaxy is expected to be roughly elliptical with the addition of perturbations due to the Galactic spiral arms and non-uniform mass distributions. In addition, the Sun oscillates up and down relative to the Galactic plane approximately 2.7 times per orbit. This is very similar to how a simple harmonic oscillator works with no drag force (damping) term. These oscillations were until recently thought to coincide with mass extinction periods on Earth.[87] However, a reanalysis of the effects of the Sun's transit through the spiral structure based on CO data has failed to find these correlations.[88]

It takes the Solar System about 225–250 million years to complete one orbit around the Galaxy (a Galactic year),[89] so the Sun is thought to have completed 18–20 orbits during its lifetime and 1/1250 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 or 0.073% of the speed of light. At this speed, it takes around 1,400 years for the Solar System to travel a distance of 1 light-year, or 8 days to travel 1 AU (astronomical unit).[90]