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Glossary term: Celestial Pole

Description: The celestial North and South Poles correspond to the points where the celestial sphere intersects with the Earth's axis of rotation.

At the Earth's North Pole, the celestial North Pole is always directly overhead and at the Earth's South Pole, the celestial South Pole is always directly overhead. Due to the Earth's rotation, the sky in the northern hemisphere appears to rotate around the celestial North Pole and in the southern hemisphere the sky appears to rotate around the celestial South Pole. The celestial North Pole is at a declination of +90 degrees and the celestial South Pole is at a declination of -90 degrees.

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Term and definition status: This term and its definition have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher

The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".

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