Talk:Orbital pole

message: An orbital pole is either end of an imaginary line running through the center of an orbit perpendicular to the orbital plane, projected onto the celestial sphere. Say what? And what's the point of the picture? If there's anything in there, it's completely lost when resized to a thumbnail. More importantly, what's the purpose of making this measurement? I hope this this isn't astrology or something. Ewlyahoocom 12:00, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Too confusing

message: It only recently occurred to me that there is a center to the circle described by the ecliptic.
Some thoughts: (but I'm not feeling up to editing the article right now):
1) I think the initial line An orbital pole is either end of an imaginary line running through the center of an orbit perpendicular to the orbital plane, projected onto the celestial sphere. is fine. This is the definition, and anyone who wishes to do so can follow the link to the definition of "celestial sphere".
2) Ok... what we want to say is essentially [And YES, I know that much of what I'm about to say is IMPRECISE and/or not 100% accurate... that's why I'm not posting it into the article... but MAKING it PRECISE strikes me as a pain, so maybe someone else would care to tackle the task]: "There are two circles which are normally drawn on maps of the Earth's (night) sky: The ecliptic and the celestial equator. The 'center' (in reality the term 'center' is incorrect. The correct term should be 'pole') of the [celestial equator] is the North Celestial Pole (or in the Southern Hemisphere, the South Celestial Pole). The centers/poles of the [ecliptic] are the orbitals poles of the Earth (also known as the Ecliptic Poles). Any object (such as a planet or satellite) which has an orbit also has its own 'orbital poles'.
3) Note: all of this is rendered a little more complicated by the fact that none of the planets orbits in a perfect circle. So the "center" of a planet's orbit should essentially be the point equidistant from (i.e. "right in the middle of") the two foci of the orbit. The orbital poles are located on the line that passes through THAT point and is perpendicular to the plane of the planet's orbit.
4) A copy/link of the picture located here (which does include labels for the North and South Ecliptic Poles): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic#/media/File:Earths_orbit_and_ecliptic.PNG  would probably be helpful.
5) I think the graphic of the various planetary orbital poles is very interesting and useful. A discussion (preferably with reference links) of the way the poles are clustered and what they may suggest about the angular momentum of the proto-solar system / early solar nebula would be VERY interesting. I'm pretty sure such an article could be found. (Looks like the planetary nebula was rotating a bit out of alignment with the mass that became the Sun... I wonder why that would be. Odd. (hmmm... L = mr x v ... maybe the Keiper belt should be considered... low mass, but big r... *muttering* (I apologize for going off on a bit of a tangent here, but a link to an outside article discussing this would strike me as very worthwhile.)
Okay. Now it's time for smarter people than me to actually IMPROVE the article. These are just suggestions.
TheScatteredMan (talk) 19:41, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not astrology and awesome, but ...