NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: The Star of Bethlehem and Navigation
From: Marcel Tschudin
Date: 2009 Jan 4, 12:41 +0200
From: Marcel Tschudin
Date: 2009 Jan 4, 12:41 +0200
Frank, you wrote: "Any such event would have been visible along a long path (a "line of position" in fact). Even if they had the predictive ability to determine that an event would not be visible from their own longitude and latitude (and this is unlikely), they could not have determined a single location just by the requirements of visibility." I don't know the astronomical capabilities of e.g. the Babylonians, but I would have guessed that they would have had quite some skills in visible observations of sun, moon and planets if they were engaged in Astrology. By systematic observations they may also have gained a certain understanding on the daily movements of the celestial bodies. I also imagine that the observation of changes in the sky by travelling east/west and north/south would have been a sort of "first level" knowledge for them. With such a basic know-how it should have been possible to make predictions for several days or may be even for a few weeks. As I mentioned before the prediction of a location could have been in form of travelling time towards a certain direction. Mike, you asked: "Hopefully my almanac has also made some reasonable adjustments for changes in the earths axis. Are those know well enough and predictable enough to project them 3000 years into the past?" I would have assumed that the information on the eclipses would provide information on both, deltaT and nutation. May be someone who has the article on how deltaT was evaluated can be more precise. Geoffrey? Paul, you wrote: "I can't explain why my computation has Venus stationary on the 10th, not the 1st." I did send an e-mail to Mr. Koch via the editor of the journal, informed him on the ongoing discussion here on NavList and invited him to comment directly. So, may be we will hear from him. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---