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Tristan Gooley X Jemma Foster
Tristan Gooley is an author and natural navigator → @thenaturalnavigator
NAVIGATING WITH THE STARS
JF: The North Star is key to celestial navigation, how is it located?
TG: The North Star is one of the most important stars a navigator will ever use. It. It's directly over the North Pole, which is why it indicates North for us, and we find it using a very easy to recognise pattern of stars called the Big Dipper. And we find these seven stars and we go from the two stars known as the pointers, five times that distance up to the North Star.
The interesting thing about the North Star when people are looking for it for the first time is that it's not the brightest star. It features very prominently in all northern cultures. Most of the famous poets of the world have referred to the North Star at some point in their work, but it's not a very bright star. It's on its own. So if you see two stars close to each other, you are not looking at the North star, the brightest star in the night sky is actually Sirius, the Dog Star.
JF: If we locate the brightest star, Sirius, how can that guide us?
TG: We don’t use Sirius much in navigation, however, it connects to Orion, in that Sirius can be found by looking along the belt of Orion. And Orion is a wonderful constellation. It has some of the brightest stars in the night sky within it, and Orion is very useful for navigators.
The belt rises in the east, and keeps on rising until it's due south, and then sets in the west for everybody in the northern hemisphere. And the leading star of the belt is called Mintaka. That rises and sets within one degree of due east and due west.
Hanging off Orion's belt, is Orion's sword, uh, fainter than the belt, but easy enough to make out on on clear nights. As Orion arcs across the sky from east through south to west, the angle of the sword changes and when the sword is perfectly vertical, it will point down to a point on your horizon that is due south.
JF: What basic information can we get from stargazing, without knowing the particular constellations?
TG: We rarely actually see the exact moment of stars rising and setting because the horizon's normally obscured by trees, hills, or buildings. But if we're thinking theoretically, which is what we have to do with the night sky, then the first star, Mintaka, is most accurate and would give us due east at that moment.
So if you've seen a star that's risen and you want to know where it rose, the angle back to the horizon is related to your latitude, or more specifically your colatitude, which is 90 degrees minus your latitude. In layman's terms, at the equator, our altitude is zero degrees 90. That's why we see stars. The moon, the sun and planets rise and set vertically at the equator. It's the reason why when we're in the tropics, everybody notices that the sunset seems to be quite abrupt. The moment people start talking about the sun setting, it is all over in about 20 minutes.
Whereas in higher latitudes, the angle that the celestial objects move is shallower. So in somewhere like northern Scotland for example, sunsets are more like a sun slide. It goes on and on and on. A good general star navigation tip is you can actually navigate using the stars without identifying any individual stars or constellations, because they rise in the east and they keep on rising until they're due south. If you keep an eye over hours on how the stars are moving, you actually have a compass in the sky without naming a single star.
JF: What planets can be useful for navigation?
TG: The planets can be used to navigate, but they're more challenging than the stars because they appear to move, relative to the stars. The word planet comes from the Greek word for wandering. To navigate, the things we need to know is that planets, on average, are much brighter than the stars, which means we see them sooner at dusk and later at dawn. If you see a bright object that doesn't appear to be moving on its own at dusk, there's a very good chance it's a planet. The brightest of all the planets is Venus.
Venus is very bright white. There's another very bright white planet, Jupiter, and Venus is always close to the sun. So if you see a very bright white planet that isn't close to the sun, and by close I mean within five extended fists width of the sun, you are most likely to be looking at Jupiter. At dusk or dawn in the eastern or western horizons, then you are probably, but not certainly, looking at Venus. Much in navigation historically has been about measuring angles, and we can use our own body to gauge angles. So if you stretch out your arm all the way and make a fist with a thumb on top, that angle from the bottom of your fist to the top will be approximately 10 degrees.
Image by Andreas Brooks→ @brooksandreas
Tristan Gooley X Jemma Foster
Tristan Gooley is an author and natural navigator → @thenaturalnavigator
NAVIGATING WITH THE STARS
JF: The North Star is key to celestial navigation, how is it located?
TG: The North Star is one of the most important stars a navigator will ever use. It. It's directly over the North Pole, which is why it indicates North for us, and we find it using a very easy to recognise pattern of stars called the Big Dipper. And we find these seven stars and we go from the two stars known as the pointers, five times that distance up to the North Star.
The interesting thing about the North Star when people are looking for it for the first time is that it's not the brightest star. It features very prominently in all northern cultures. Most of the famous poets of the world have referred to the North Star at some point in their work, but it's not a very bright star. It's on its own. So if you see two stars close to each other, you are not looking at the North star, the brightest star in the night sky is actually Sirius, the Dog Star.
JF: If we locate the brightest star, Sirius, how can that guide us?
TG: We don’t use Sirius much in navigation, however, it connects to Orion, in that Sirius can be found by looking along the belt of Orion. And Orion is a wonderful constellation. It has some of the brightest stars in the night sky within it, and Orion is very useful for navigators.
The belt rises in the east, and keeps on rising until it's due south, and then sets in the west for everybody in the northern hemisphere. And the leading star of the belt is called Mintaka. That rises and sets within one degree of due east and due west.
Hanging off Orion's belt, is Orion's sword, uh, fainter than the belt, but easy enough to make out on on clear nights. As Orion arcs across the sky from east through south to west, the angle of the sword changes and when the sword is perfectly vertical, it will point down to a point on your horizon that is due south.
JF: What basic information can we get from stargazing, without knowing the particular constellations?
TG: We rarely actually see the exact moment of stars rising and setting because the horizon's normally obscured by trees, hills, or buildings. But if we're thinking theoretically, which is what we have to do with the night sky, then the first star, Mintaka, is most accurate and would give us due east at that moment.
So if you've seen a star that's risen and you want to know where it rose, the angle back to the horizon is related to your latitude, or more specifically your colatitude, which is 90 degrees minus your latitude. In layman's terms, at the equator, our altitude is zero degrees 90. That's why we see stars. The moon, the sun and planets rise and set vertically at the equator. It's the reason why when we're in the tropics, everybody notices that the sunset seems to be quite abrupt. The moment people start talking about the sun setting, it is all over in about 20 minutes.
Whereas in higher latitudes, the angle that the celestial objects move is shallower. So in somewhere like northern Scotland for example, sunsets are more like a sun slide. It goes on and on and on. A good general star navigation tip is you can actually navigate using the stars without identifying any individual stars or constellations, because they rise in the east and they keep on rising until they're due south. If you keep an eye over hours on how the stars are moving, you actually have a compass in the sky without naming a single star.
JF: What planets can be useful for navigation?
TG: The planets can be used to navigate, but they're more challenging than the stars because they appear to move, relative to the stars. The word planet comes from the Greek word for wandering. To navigate, the things we need to know is that planets, on average, are much brighter than the stars, which means we see them sooner at dusk and later at dawn. If you see a bright object that doesn't appear to be moving on its own at dusk, there's a very good chance it's a planet. The brightest of all the planets is Venus.
Venus is very bright white. There's another very bright white planet, Jupiter, and Venus is always close to the sun. So if you see a very bright white planet that isn't close to the sun, and by close I mean within five extended fists width of the sun, you are most likely to be looking at Jupiter. At dusk or dawn in the eastern or western horizons, then you are probably, but not certainly, looking at Venus. Much in navigation historically has been about measuring angles, and we can use our own body to gauge angles. So if you stretch out your arm all the way and make a fist with a thumb on top, that angle from the bottom of your fist to the top will be approximately 10 degrees.
Image by Andreas Brooks→ @brooksandreas