NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Rommel John Miller
Date: 2016 Apr 9, 22:18 -0400
We all have heard of axial precession no doubt, the theory if not truth that the earth wobbles in proportion to the universe.
When I was in college and took an Earth-sciences course as well as Astronomy both spoke of Axial Precession.
The profs in the 1990’s warned though that theory had nothing to do with it. That the fact that nothing in the universe is perfect is stands that everything changes over time.
Remember that we inhabit a tiny little blue ball in the further outreaches of the Milky Way what is relative to us here is not the truth of the center or the opposite side. Or anywhere along the perimeter of the galaxy.
There is a ton of misinformation on the internet and one idiotic brain fart on the part of some wise crack can start a fire which soon goes viral.
Supposedly and I use the term pejoratively, the North Star (Polaris) is true north, at least we land based navigators take it to be. Makes sense that we do when all constellations rotate pretty succinctly, even the North Star’s host constellation of the Little Dipper.
If we had the temerity and warm clothes to stand directly at the North Pole, we would see Polaris almost nearly directly over-head. Not quite exact but darn close. Good enough for the Governments which publish the nautical almanacs and sight reduction tables we all have necessity to use.
All I can caution about is the fact that the truth can be stretched to the depth of urban legends and myths, all of which leads me to view everything on the internet with an eye of suspicion. Thing is though, an author of a book or encyclopedia article is no better.
It is that we have come to accept certain canons of sustainable presence as truth and that we hold to them faithfully as being written in stone.
Nothing wrong with that, Moses and God had that sort of understanding.
Whatever the truth is, we can only approximate it in out imperfect forms.
Enough of a rant and ballistic free association, I just had to speak to this and offer the scientific aspect of what might be the accepted truth.
All the best,
Rommel John Miller
8679 Island Pointe Drive
Webster Estates
Hebron, MD 21830
410-213-2690 (land)
443-365-7925 (cell)
*Sent from GMAIL via MS OFFICE OUTLOOK*
From: NavList@fer3.com [mailto:NavList@fer3.com] On Behalf Of Frank Reed
Sent: Saturday, April 9, 2016 9:24 PM
To: rommeljohnmiller@gmail.com
Subject: [NavList] Re: New corrections for latitude by Polaris?
Sometimes we have to worry that humor doesn't work here. So before anyone goes ballistic on this one, please bear in mind that Philip Lange is surely kidding about changing the Polaris correction tables. :)
By the way, the general media coverage on this particular story is "Internet viral" nonsense --just incredibly poor. Good luck finding any useful account of it.
Frank Reed
