Thy Veils

A Cosmic Celebration Spanning the whole galaxy, moving at 828,000 km/h around the supermassive black hole at its center, Galactic Tick Day celebrates our progress around the Milky Way. It is the first holiday designed to raise awareness about the fascinating movement of the Solar System around our galaxy. The time needed for our solar system to move around the galactic center is roughly 225 million years. Galactic Tick Day occurs on a regular interval of 1.7361 years, called a Galactic Tick, and it represents 1/129,600,000 (one centi-arcsecond) of our solar system’s orbit around that black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Most people have a good sense of the motion of our solar system because it is a fundamental part of our lives. The rotation of the Earth makes for day and night; our planet’s revolution around the sun marks a year. But fewer Earthlings grasp the larger picture — that our solar system is just one among billion others, orbiting a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. And where the sun goes, we go too. The first Galactic Tick Day took place one galactic tick after Hans Lippershey filed the patent for the telescope on 2 October 1608. The first observance of the holiday was on 29 September 2016, the 235th Galactic Tick Day. This is also the day Thy Veils joined the celebration.