Projection of GJ 436 in the plane of the sky for the best-fit orbital architecture, in the configuration where the stellar spin (shown as a black arrow extending from the north pole) is pointing toward the Earth. The south pole is shown as en empty disk. The stellar equator is represented as a solid (dashed) black line on the visible (hidden) stellar hemisphere. The stellar disk is colored as a function of its surface RV field. The normal to the orbital plane of GJ 436b is shown as a green arrow. The thick green solid curve represents the best-fit orbital trajectory. The thin lines surrounding it show orbits obtained for orbital inclination, semi-major axis, and sky-projected obliquity values drawn randomly within 1σ from their probability distributions. The star, planet (black disk), and orbit are to scale.