South

A compass rose with south highlighted

South is one of the cardinal directions and is opposite to the north.

By Western convention, the bottom side of a map is south; the southern direction has azimuth or bearing of 180°.

True south is the direction towards the southern end of the axis about which the earth rotates, called the South Pole and located in Antarctica. Magnetic south is the direction towards the west magnetic pole, some distance away from the south geographic pole.

On any rotating object the side appearing to rotate clockwise when viewed from afar may be called its southern side.

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