Which way is South on WMAP ?

[Bjarne]

Which way is geographic south of the Earth pointing at the WMAP ?

[Strange]

Do you mean in those "egg shaped" images?

 

As the Milky Way runs roughly east-west across the sky, I think it it will be roughly towards the left or right of the image, or maybe into or out of the plane of the image...

Edited August 31, 2014 by Strange

[Airbrush]

I'd also like to know that. But it seems to me the people who created the WMAP are located on Earth. And there is a north/south for our solar system disk and it only makes sense that they would align it with our solar system's north/south. And if they didn't, I wonder why not?

[Strange]

If you look at this image, for example, the red band across the middle is the emissions from our galaxy. Earth's axis is not aligned with the galaxy's axis. I think it is *roughly* 90 degrees away.

 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMAP_2008_41GHz.png

Edited September 1, 2014 by Strange

[LaurieAG]

If you look at this image, for example, the red band across the middle is the emissions from our galaxy. Earth's axis is not aligned with the galaxy's axis. I think it is *roughly* 90 degrees away.

 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMAP_2008_41GHz.png

 

More like somewhere around 60 +/- 1.5 degrees.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System

 

Orbit about Galactic Center

Invariable-to-galactic plane inclination

60.19°8 (ecliptic)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invariable_plane

 

The invariable plane of a planetary system, also called Laplace's invariable plane, is the plane passing through its barycenter(center of mass) perpendicular to its angular momentum vector. In the Solar System, about 98% of this effect is contributed by the orbital angular momenta of the four jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). The invariable plane is within 0.5° of the orbital plane of Jupiter,^[1] and may be regarded as the weighted average of all planetary orbital and rotational planes.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

Inclination

• 7.155 deg to Sun's equator;
• 1.57869 deg^[4] to invariable plane.

 

[Strange]

 

More like somewhere around 60 +/- 1.5 degrees.

 

 

That is within my error bounds for "*roughly* 90 degrees" I really had no idea.

 

I did try looking it up but couldn't find anything, so thanks for that.