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For other uses, see East (disambiguation).

East is most commonly a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.

East is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of west and at right angles to north and south.

By convention, the right side of a terrestrial (ordinary) map is east. On the contrary, the left side of a star chart (a map of the skies) is east. (This is because we look upwards to the sky and downwards on the earth - a change of perspective.) This convention dates from the Renaissance; many medieval maps place the east on the top of the map - hence the verb orient.

To go east using a compass for navigation, set a bearing or azimuth of 090°.

East is the direction from which the sun rises at the equinox, and therefore the direction in which the Earth rotates about its axis. Another consequence is that it is the preferred direction of space launches, because of the saving of delta-v.

Moving continuously east is following a circle of latitude, which, except in the case of the equator, is not a great circle.

Whenever there is a rotational motion, the four directions can be defined. When one side of the plane of motion is taken as north, then observed from north, the anticlockwise direction is east, considering north as "up".

The etymology of "east" is from an old Indo-European word for dawn. Cf. Latin aurora and Greek eōs. Eostre, a Germanic goddess of dawn, might have been a personification of both dawn and the cardinal point—her actual existence is highly disputed, however.

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