NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Sean C
Date: 2021 Feb 18, 16:12 -0800
Jim,
You wrote:
"I got the confused notion that somehow the actual north pole, the actual physical spot around which the northern hemisphere turns, actually moved. I must have imagined the wandering of the magnetic pole. In any case... I was an accountant by trade, so what can you expect? On thinking it over, I believe the poles don't physically wander around but the axis wobbles, pointing at different points in the sky over very long time periods... right?"
Except the poles do wander. Although not by a large distance. See this article on polar motion at the IERS website:
https://www.iers.org/IERS/EN/Science/EarthRotation/PolarMotion.html
I have also attached a plot I made several years ago of the polar motion from 2000 to 2015. I'm prety sure I got the distances right, but I might not have.
Cheers,
Sean C.
