When I look at a solar system drawing there are planets circling the sun and they look like they are in a straight line and level to each other. But is there a below and above? Like if we sent out a camera directly under earth (south pole) would there be planets, stars, etc below Earth?
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Below and above are defined by whatever has the strongest gravitational pull on you at any given minute. Below is closer to it and above is further away from it. There’s no absolute below or above though – it’s always relative to your current position. To answer your second question, “below” Earth wouldn’t be pointing out form the south pole, it would be between Earth and the sun.
Our current maps and globes are only oriented with north on the top because the explorers and cartographers who first created them were on the northern hemisphere, using north-pointing compasses, so it made more sense to have their part of the world closer to the top to make it easier to read. There’s nothing inherently “up” about north, and nothing inherently “down” about south.
Edit: another confounding factor to make the up/down orientation of north/south even more arbitrary is that technically the north pole of the earth is magnetically south. I don’t know how the naming mixup happened.
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