what does 23½ have to do with it?

Something doesn't seem right in that info graphic. The RASC Toronto Centre Facebook referred directly to a graphic image on the gawker assets page without any explanation.

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18u2lyr0rjf1djpg/original.jpg

Is it our job to educate?

I understood immediately the intention of the graphic. The wobble is a reference to our "precession." The very slow (imperceptible) top-like spin of the planet in space. And how this prescribes a large circle in space. But where, at a given moment, or years, or decades, the Earth's axis is pointing. Which amateur astronomers worry about. That's the North Celestial Pole.

Feelings aside, that this is an odd thing to refer to without any explanation, that the circle takes 26000 years to complete, I stared at the info graphic. And something struck me, within the graphic, as odd. 23½ degrees. I wondered if that was right. I wondered if the graphic designer confused this angle with our current tilt of the Earth from the solar system ecliptic.

But, I could be wrong. I'll have to research this. Coincidence? Or are they one in the same thing? I wondered if the angle of the precession circle (from the pole) had nothing to do with 23½ degrees.

§

Wikipedia to the rescue. The article on the precession , with references to the Earth, shows that the 23½ is correct. And I stand corrected.