APOD: M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy (2015 May 02)

[Chris Peterson]

so in regards to galactic spin axis, there is no " standard " direction to cue off but simply the way we see it . No giant Cartesian coordinate system of universe proportions.

There is some evidence of a correlation between the spin axes of galaxies in clusters along void walls in the large scale structure of the Universe. Maybe, maybe not. But as far as what we normally see in images, the orientation is random.