Strange Question? Of course, it is. Well, umm, actually it
depends on your point of view. Usually, we think of the ecliptic (earth's
orbital) plane as the horizontal plane. If we do so, earth is actually tilted
towards it. This view can be seen in the animation below.
However, we may change our point of view. If we think of the earth's
equatorial plane as the horizontal plane, then things look a bit different. In
that case, the sun is tilted against earth. An orbit plot looks a bit different
now:
The underlying physics is all the same - just the angle we are looking at it
is different. No matter how we look at it, the fact remains that there is a
tilt of (currently 23.44 degrees) between earth rotational axis and the
ecliptical plane. And this tilt is quite important, as it causes seasons on
earth.
Just a remark to the animations: these were created with the astronomy
software RedShift 6. The animations are not to scale. I have greatly zoomed
earth, so that some details can be seen. If you look closely, you can also see
that the equator and the ecliptical plane cross each other only twice a year -
at the equinoxes.
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