The other two "elements" of the sun's rotation were also ascertained by Carrington with hitherto unattained precision. He fixed the inclination of its axis to the ecliptic at 82° 45'; the longitude of the ascending node at 73° 40' (for the epoch 1850 A.D.). These data--which have scarcely yet been improved upon--suffice to determine the position in space of the sun's equator. Its north pole is directed towards a star in the coils of the Dragon, midway between Vega and the Pole-star; its plane intersects that of the earth's orbit in such a way that our planet finds itself in the same level on or about the 3rd of June and the 5th of December, when any spots visible on the disc cross it in apparently straight lines. At other times, the paths pursued by them seem curved--downward (to an observer in the northern hemisphere) between June and December, upward between December and June. A singular peculiarity in the distribution of sun-spots emerged from Carrington's studies at the time of the minimum of 1856. Two broad belts of the solar surface, as we have seen, are frequented by them, of which the limits may be put at 6° and 35° of north and south latitude. Individual equatorial spots are not uncommon, but nearer to the poles than 35° they are a rare exception. Carrington observed--as an extreme instance--in July, 1858, one in south latitude 44°; and Peters, in June, 1846, watched, during several days, a spot in 50° 24' north latitude. But beyond this no true macula has ever been seen; for Lahire's reported observation of one in latitude 70° is now believed to have had its place on the solar globe erroneously assigned; and the "veiled spots" described by Trouvelot in 1875[423] as occurring within 10° of the pole can only be regarded as, at the most, the same kind of disturbance in an undeveloped form.