Excellent Turtle
And one more log on the fire:
Quote:
Here, the galactic plane, or galactic equator, is used as reference plane. This is the great circle of the celestial sphere which best approximates the visible Milky Way. For historical reasons, the direction from us to the Galactic Center has been selected as zero point for galactic longitude l, and this was counted toward the direction of our Sun's rotational motion which is therefore at l = 90 deg. This sense of rotation, however, is opposite to the sense of rotation of our Galaxy, as can be easily checked ! Therefore, the galactic north pole, defined by the galactic coordinate system, coincides with the rotational south pole of our Galaxy, and vice versa.
http://seds.org/~spider/spider/Schol....html#galactic
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So, indeed, the galactic coordinate system is backwards (left handed as it were). Also, check out this software which is bloody brilliant:
Where is M13? - Home
You can look at Polaris (the north star) for example and see exactly where it is in the galaxy which gives a very good sense of things.
~modest
