How do astronomers identify the North and South poles of planets?

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I looked a post where it showed planets rotation speed at 10hrs/sec. It had an arrow pointing out of what I assume to be the North Pole. For example, Venus had it’s North Pole pointing in the general opposite of the Earth’s North Pole.

In: Physics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

For a long time, north meant the same general direction as the earth’s north pole. When it was discovered that Venus’s rotated in the other direction, its day was described as retrograde, but it still had the same north as earth. Uranus is what made everything confusing, it’s nearly sideways rotation made us ask that does north really mean.

Right now there are two main camps, one says that North is the counterclockwise pole, the other that north is the same relative direction the earth’s pole points and the counterclockwise pole is the “positive” pole. In either case, measures like angle of inclination are taken from the counterclockwise pole.

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