On Earth, the cardinal directions are straightforward. The arrow on a compass points to the nearest magnetic pole. You can then use it to travel anywhere on Earth.
In space, the idea of anything being "central" enough to be used as a "North" (since the universe has no center) or being fixated enough to not somehow pose issues is more convoluted.
If you were a pioneer of space exploration, what would your "North" be?
We already have one. Its Mecca, and all the aliens are Muslim.
(putting my shitposts with the other shitposts so they don't bother)
Works very well until you're moving between superclusters, at which point the universe becomes homogeneous (as far as is known). At that point you probably just need to set an arbitrary origin for your system of coordinates.
Cosmic background radiation provides a stable frame of reference for setting up a coordinate system. If the explorers have a main HQ base, it can be set as the origin (0,0,0). The location of an object in space can be communicated using a tuple like (10km, 30°, 30°), representing the radius (distance to the object), polar angle (angle between the positive z-axis and the line connecting the origin to the point), and azimuthal angle (angle between the positive x-axis and the line connecting the origin to the point on the xy-plane).
Alternatively, if only a general region is needed, grid coordinates can be used with any useful unit of measurement for the distance between grid lines.
Yep. Fun fact, if you used the center of the Earth at Epoch 0, the reference point would shoot out of central Africa a few seconds later in the direction of Ophiuchus.
Source: Napkin math that was surprisingly hard, because of all the moving parts with their own coordinate systems that don't necessarily have nice conversion tables in common use.
So i guess what your asking is what is the stationary point of reference that you use to calculate your position? You can use any object but typically you use whatever object your gravitationally bound to. Like in earth orbit you use earth, in interplanetary space you use the sun, in interstellar space it becomes more up to you. Center of galaxy maybe, or nearest star. Kinda depends what ur trying to do.
