Daily Galactic Dive

Looking at this morn's chart I thought about how we are now more than half way up in our yearly cycle of orbiting above and then below the Sun.  What?!  above and below?!  Don't we go around the Sun?  Well we do, but if your frame of reference is the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, then we go above and below blazing Sol.  Lost?  wanna get found in just 5 minutes?  click on this link for a visual aid in picturing Earth's orientation to the plane of the Milky Way.

In the video i showed Earth turning on its axis, but i did not show Earth orbiting above and below the Sun.  Scroll down to the end of this post for an image i found several years ago on an astronomy site which might help picture that motion.

Did you scroll down and look at the Brian Fenerty graphic?  Pretty wild I'd say.   Pretty damn cosmic compared to what we grew up with.  Cosmic as in order.  Like that's not the system we see in all our exalted SCIENCE textbooks.  Scuse me for being facetious.  No, I did not march in defense of SCIENCE.  I was probably on the couch studying STUFF. 

Chill out MP.

As i was about to say before i got so rude and angry, don't feel stupid if you feel completely lost looking at these images.  It's ok to doubt my sanity, as long as you continue to ask questions and test your suspicions.  But feeling dumb is something that comes with new ideas, even if the ideas are more accurate and inclusive visualizations of our very old (4 billion plus years) solar system that we think we learned all about in elementary school. 

Here's the chart for this morn showing 18 hours and some minutes crossing the midheaven.

I circled sidereal time 18 hr 35 mins and MC 8 deg Capricorn.  Capricorn goes from 18 -20 hours. 

Here's a constellation we see due South or North depending on Northern or Southern Hemisphere when 18-20hrs are crossing the MC. 

I got that from Wikipedia. They have great constellation maps from Sky and Telescope.

Ok.  You may have noticed I said Capricorn was on the MC at 9:17am, and Capricorn goes from 18hrs-20hrs.  Why is this graphic showing the Tea Pot astrerism from Sagittarius on the MC and not the Goat constellation?  If you don't understand this already, you might want to save that question for another day; but if you happen to be really focused and brave today try Googling Precession of the Equinoxes.   And the MC page might help.

Next is a screenshot from Stellarium showing Raleigh facing the same area of heaven, with Sun's light filtered out.  Can you see the Tea Pot asterism?  See how close it is to the Galactic Equator?  That means Raleigh is facing the plane of the Milky Way looking into its center.

Next is a screenshot from Stellarium for a few hours later when Raleigh is almost facing into the Milky Way's bottom dome. 

Cetus the sea monster tells us we are facing down.  It goes from about 1hr to 3hrs.  In the current era Earth's celestial equator goes right through Cetus's neck.

Here's a shot showing higher in the Raleigh sky at 9:17am (Sun's light filtered out) so you can see Cygnus the Swan.  A boy dove into the river over and over looking for his drowned friend.  The gods turned him into a swan and put him in the sky.  I think Cygnus is Greek for swan.  So we're diving like swans to face the bottom of the galaxy when Cygnus is crossing the meridian also known as midheaven.

And last of all the image to picture how Earth circles above and below Sun once a year.

Amazing huh?  That's what I thought when i finally found it.  I think I got it from an astronomy site for a planetarium  in Calgary, Canada.  I can't find the page again so I can't be sure.  There is something in the image about an animated gif.  All I could find was the image.