galactic north

Galactic north (the galactic north pole or north galactic pole) is the point on the celestial sphere in a direction parallel to the Milky Way's axis, specifically, in the direction closer to celestial north pole (northward along the Earth's axis), thus galactic north has a positive declination. A standardized galactic north position was defined as an element of the galactic coordinate system (by the IAU in 1958), as perpendicular to its standardized galactic plane, which was chosen as a reasonable "nominal" determination of the plane in which the Milky Way's disk resides. The galactic north position was specified in B1950.0 coordinates as B124900+272400, which was clearly deliberately rounded, which I presume was because an actual axis is not precisely known and is subject to technical definition, thus such a "north" sufficiently precise for coordinates is somewhat arbitrary. Translated to epoch J2000.0, it is roughly right ascension 125126.28 and declination +270741.9. The other galactic pole (the south galactic pole) is in the opposite direction, i.e., subtracting 12 hours from the right ascension and changing the sign of the declination.