Semi-OT: A General Tech Question Thread for me :)

[Wolfman77]

Seems to have alot of newer stars.

"Sol is located 67 ly north of the galactic plane within a roughly 200-ly wide band that is rich in gas, dust, and newborn stars," from this page

http://members.nova.org/~sol/chview/chv5.htm

[Slick]

"north" ???

[Suicide Junkie]

Based on spin and the right hand rule, I suspect.

[Slick]

Then there would be a "south" but no "east" or "west".

[Hunpecked]

"Spinward" and "anti-spinward".

[Slick]

The entire quote is more precise: "... Sol lies less than half way out (26,000 ly) from the galactic center ... on the core-ward side of one of the galaxy's spiral arms named after Orion... Sol is located 67 ly north of the galactic plane ..."

So we have Radius, direction (if you can call in the direction of Orion a true direction) and distance above the galactic plane. That's cylindrical coordinates.

[Hunpecked]

One could also give directions relative to something outside our galaxy, such as a prominent galaxy or cluster of galaxies more or less on the plane of the Milky Way. Movement around the galactic center would eventually change our position relative to this marker, of course, but differential movement would do the same with regard to stars inside our galaxy.

A Wikipedia article describes a spherical coordinate system for the Milky Way:

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

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Slick said:
Then there would be a "south" but no "east" or "west".

In, Out, Up, Down, East, West.

* Niven!