"Colin" wrote in message oups.com...
If I were looking at the earth in such a way that I was looking
straight down at the north pole, is the earth orbiting clockwise or
counterclockwise around the sun?

Counterclockwise.

Are all the bodies orbiting the sun
orbiting in the same direction?

No, only most. Keep in mind that space is three-dimensional,
no two planets are in the same plane and a comet can easily
come from above or below and be going clockwise.
Our own satellite, the Moon, is not in the same plane as
the Earth.
http://ecuip.lib.uchicago.edu/diglib...nom_moon-1.gif
Notice the shadow. The Earth-Moon distance is not to scale, but the
picture is a good illustration. If it were not so inclined all eclipses
would appear only in the tropics, never far North or South.