Solar System Barycenter

Using Celestia, I created a model representing the motion of the Sun relative to the Solar System’s center of mass (aka barycenter). Jupiter and Saturn by far have the greatest effect. The innermost planets’ effect is completely negligible, so they are ignored in the demo. The barycenter is marked by the red ’cursor’ on the left screen, which shows the Sun from a polar perspective. Notice how the Sun moves in response to the orbital positions of the planets on the right screen (esp. Jupiter and Saturn). The model spans the period from 2015 to 2188, or about 170 years. Speed is significantly increased for clarification purposes (100,000,000 times normal speed).