Galactic Alignment

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The 'Galactic Alignment' is an astronomical phenomenon that refers to an alignment between the December solstice sun with the equator of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is usually associated with the end of the ancient Mayan calendar in 2012. It was originally popularised by John Major Jenkins (http://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=Galactic_Alignment), and is now a intregral part of many new age proposals of how 2012 might affect us.

The Galactic Alignment is the alignment of the December solstice sun with the Galactic equator. This alignment occurs as a result of the precession of the equinoxes. Precession is caused by the earth wobbling very slowly on its axis and shifts the position of the equinoxes and solstices one degree every 71.5 years. Because the sun is one-half of a degree wide, it will take the December solstice sun 36 years to precess through the Galactic equator.

The Galactic Equator is a virtual line that describes 0 degrees longitude and 0 degrees latitude, and acts as a divisionary line between the northern and southern hemispheres of the Milky Way galaxy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_equator

The precise alignment of the solstice point (the precise center-point of the body of the sun as viewed from earth) with the Galactic equator was calculated to occur in 1998 (Jean Meeus, Mathematical Astronomy Morsels, 1997 - mentioned by Jenkins at http://alignment2012.com/whatisGA.htm ). This date was further refined by Smelyakov to May 7 1998 (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/TIMEWAVEZERO2012/message/15675). Therefore, if the significance of 2012 is related to a precise intersecting of the Galactic Equator, whatever that significance would have meant would already have occurred.

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