NavList:

John H, you wrote:
"It would have to be subtle - some of us have the declination of major navigational stars seared into our memories, you'd have to get into arc-minutes to spoof."

I would count that as "special knowledge", John. I would estimate that there is not one celestial navigator in a hundred who could tell you the declinations (even to the nearest degree) of more than two navigational stars --and one of those would be Polaris, which, luckily for this mischief, is not listed on the daily pages.

But since you brought it up, I'm curious: how many of the declinations have you seared into your memory? And how did that come about? Did you intentionally memorize some of them?

Let's take a poll while we're here. For anyone reading this, could you estimate the declination of Betelgeuse and Rigel off the top of your head? If you saw a table showing Betelgeuse with a South declination, would you immediately recognize at as erroneous? Or would you have to think about it for a minute?

-FER

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