"Mary Shafer" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 15:30:43 GMT, "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.

I'm confused here. How can you tell it's 120 deg, not 60? Or 180,
not 0? Is the northness of the pole based on rotation direction or
something?

If you didn't, north and south would change if you
looked at the solar system upside-down.

Bruce