Which way up?

[budski]

This post is probably as stronomically trivial as they get but I would like to imagine that I'm not alone in thinking the following:-

I know North is always represented by being on top but whenever I see Lunar images I can't help feeling that Tycho should be at the top of the picture with its luminescent rays spilling out and flowing magestically down the pitted moonscape. Similarly, Jupiter's Great Red Spot belongs near its chin while the front of Saturn's rings should be below its equator like a huge cosmic smile!

Finally, I picture that we (and the rest of the Solar bodies) go around the Sun in an anti-clockwise direction.

I hope this view is endorsed by some of our counterparts in Australia where they are used to upside-down thinking.

Ok ,enuf already.... I think I shall go and lay down for a while ......

[garethmob]

a telescope normally reverses an image so what you see when your looking is the opersite effect, the exception is usally binoclours

there may be somthing iv missed out though

[Mike Hawtin]

As I understand it there is no "up" in the cosmos so whichever orientation you prefer is to my mind as valid as any other. Some might argue that as far as the Solar System is concerned North should be up but speaking as someone who has lived and observed down under that can also be considered a moot point, maybe even a little bit chauvin'istic.

[MarySkater]

I understand the optical reason why scopes reverse things left-to-right, up-to-down or both. But as a newbie, I can't help wishing that things were oriented the same in an instrument as they look to the naked eye.

It can be done - my birdwatching scope does it. But it has fancier optics, and cost more, than my newly acquired small astro refractor. And the birding scope was designed for daylight use, so it doesn't mind losing a few photons along the way.

Mary