Celestial Direction

We chart our course by the stars, the images of old. As we gaze out into the endless cosmos, the stars have observed us in turn. In dreams, or more frequently in nightmares, they map out our destinies.

Each and every celestial body that orbits the sun dances between the same stars. It may take months to travel from the inner world of Sol to the furthest reaches of the outer world, but the stars themselves are so incomprehensibly further away that they appear the same on the heartfields of Pluto as they do on Mercury.
Like an echo through history, the old days of seafaring and the modern age of spacefaring are charted by the same stars. A spacecraft sets a guide star, and understands the world through the ecliptic coordinate system. The people of Sol know an even older system in their bones. They map the stars as a tapestry of constellations and myths.

Polar Constellations

The ecliptic plane itself finds its northernmost stars in the constellation of Draco, and its south in the constellation of Dorado. Although the planets all align along the ecliptic plane, the planets and moons themselves may lean in different directions. The planets and moons that do not have much of an axial tilt, such as Mercury, Venus, Luna and Jupiter all share a draconian north. A slight angle points the south of Mercury towards Pictor rather than Dorado.
Like a north star serves as a dependable guiding star, Astrologers believe the northern constellation reveals the aims of a celestial body, and the southern constellation serves as a counterweight. The Draconian north is associated with era-defining challenges, the sort that give rise to great heroes and terrible foes. The Dorado, the strong dolphinfish, is seen as a symbol of good luck, although the wise do not forget that its namesake is a predator.
Mars and Neptune share a cygnian north, associated with grace and transcendance, but Mars looks down towards the southern sails while Neptune is grounded in the stern of the greater constellation of Argo.
Saturn's north is the king Cepheus, and the south is the navigational instrument Octans. Uranus straddles between the northern serpentbearer Ophiuchus and the southern hunter Orion.
The pole stars of a planet or moon are not constant, the planets shift, the orbits are imperfect. The north and south of the current day are not those of the distant past. Even the ecliptic shifts over time, leading the system into new celestial eras.

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See Also

Outer Space
Locations Asteroid Belt ( The Collision Course ) · Oort Cloud Species Deep Space Leviathan · Orbitross · Astroplankton Materials Astrallite · Oortite Technology Crystal Technology · Super Wide Access Network · Spacecraft ( Dragonfly Carrier ) Society Traditions ( Dumplings in Space ) · Organizations ( Sentinel ) · Conditions ( Deep Space Syndrome · Oortic Poisoning )