{"id":334,"date":"2011-07-17T00:00:20","date_gmt":"2011-07-17T00:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/?p=334"},"modified":"2011-07-16T18:17:05","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T18:17:05","slug":"knowing-which-way-is-up-and-north-south-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/17\/knowing-which-way-is-up-and-north-south-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Knowing which way is up (and north, south, etc.)"},"content":{"rendered":"

SkyCaramba astronomy blog for the week ending July 23, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

Almost everybody these days has at least a general idea which ways are north, south, east, and west. Street signs help. So do some handheld electronic devices. If you don\u2019t have such things around you, maybe you have a built-in sense of direction. If you have none of those, there are time-tested methods that work as long as you have a clear enough sky.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We\u2019ve all heard the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. That\u2019s a good general rule. Remember it\u2019s not due east or due west on most days. And if you\u2019re very far north or south of the equator, the sun may rise and set very far from due east and due west at certain times of the year.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A safer assumption is that the sun will be in a certain direction at high noon. At a middle or high northern latitude, the sun will always be southward then. From a middle or high southern latitude, it will be northward. Close to the equator, however, the sun will be a little north, a little south, or right overhead. If you can track which way the sun appears to be moving midday, that\u2019s a good indicator for east-to-west motion.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a similar set of circumstances for the moon, generally rising in the east and setting in the west. Again, the closer you get to the poles, the farther moonrise and moonset get from east and west most days.<\/p>\n

Few sky objects stay in almost the same place all the time and are reliable direction markers. The North Star, or Polaris, is the most well known. It\u2019s not exactly on the celestial north pole. But it\u2019s close enough, you can\u2019t tell the difference just by looking.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you live north of the equator, there\u2019s almost certainly a spot somewhere near your home or apartment where you can stand at any time on any night, look up just above a building or tree, and find the North Star.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry to inform those south of the equator that there is no widely accepted south star. The stars closest to the south celestial pole are very dim. You can\u2019t see them except in dark skies and many of them still can\u2019t be seen except with binoculars. However, it\u2019s not hard to recognize the visible star patterns near the south celestial pole. The Southern Cross points to where an ideal south star would be.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sailors in centuries past learned methods like these and many more to figure out where they were on the high seas with no landmarks around. But since the stars alone can\u2019t tell us everything we want to know about where we are, much work went into developing new technology. In modern navigation, constellations of satellites have usurped the constellations of stars. Microcomputers have usurped our mental faculties. A thing that fits in a shirt pocket replaces maps and a chest full of navigation instruments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SkyCaramba astronomy blog for the week ending July 23, 2011 Almost everybody these days has at least a general idea which ways are north, south, east, and west. Street signs help. So do some handheld electronic devices. If you don\u2019t have such things around you, maybe you have a built-in sense of direction. If you … Continue reading Knowing which way is up (and north, south, etc.)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[169,142,165,167,163,164,168,166],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}