Thread 16755999

Ive noticed nothing keeps going down in space. Whats under our solar system? Anything? Why dont we ever point our space telescopes downward?

>>16755999 (OP)
The galactic plane is relatively flat. If you go straight “up” or “down” from earth you’d run into minimal stuff in the Milky Way before exiting the galaxy. All the stars and galaxies are closer to the equator’s POV

>>16756004
Yeah i just was thinking about it and I always found it odd everything kind of is all in the same plane. Surely theres gotta be something going on under earth or the sun.

>>16756017
Well all the stars in the Southern hemisphere are "below" earth in this perspective, with this being the Southernmost:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Octantis

>>16755999 (OP)
Earth spins on its axis and we can see different places in the universe at different times.

>>16756044
Yes OP specifically pointed out that we can see down, but wants to know why do we only point telescopes and send probes the other way.

>>16756573
Telescopes get pointed basically every direction. Pic related is basically right at the south pole.

As for why probes aren't sent that way, well there isn't, or shouldn't be, much to see. Star dust condenses into a disk as the solar system forms so everything is kinda locked in that plane.
That and missions like voyager use the gravity of massive planets to "catapult" them to speed. Much more difficult to do something like that if you're not moving along the same plane.

>>16756586
Forgot pic, sorry.
NGC 7098.

>>16756017
It makes perfect sense, take a sphere and fill it with particles with random velocity and direction and they will cancel out all the rotation except for the dominant direction given enough time. If you for instance put in 50 things that go clockwise and 60 that go counter clockwise then 50 and 50 will collide and neutralize each others momentum and the remaining 10 will distribute theirs so all 110 now move counter clockwise in roughly the same manner, outliers will collide more often and thus normalize with the rest. The same thing happens with galaxies and solar systems and planets and basically everything. It just averages out to the dominant direction. Gravitational collapse accentuates small difference far away into big ones up close too.

>>16756026
Whoa thats neat as hell. Thanks