"Eric Chomko" wrote in message
...
Bruce Sterling Woodcock ) wrote:

: "Mike Rhino" wrote in message
: news : "Eric Chomko" wrote in message
: ...
: How about a case where one of the poles points in the direction of
the
: orbital plane? IOW, at one point in the orbit the north pole points
at
: the
: sun and on the other side of the orbit the south pole points toward
the
: sun. Unlike the Earth's or Mars' ~25 deg. axis tilt this other is
more
: on
: the order of a 90 deg. axis tilt.
:
: Uranus comes pretty close with an axis tilt of 97.86 degrees.
:
: http://www.solarviews.com/eng/uranus.htm

: And Pluto is about 120 degrees, and Venus about 180 degrees.

Isn't that like saying Venus rotates 3 degrees retrograde the same thing?

Yes, but both are valid ways of looking at the same thing.

It would be nice to know if Venus was "originally" rotating
backwards, but it's certainly possible a collision knocked it
all the way over.

How do we know Uranus isn't rotating retrograde and
wasn't simply knocked 260 degrees over?

And Pluto is 57.5 degrees retrograde? The latter is new to me as I had
not known that we knew the axis tilt of Pluto.

We determined it once we had radar pictures (and the Hubble).

Bruce