NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: a grand tradition
From: Michael Dorl
Date: 2011 Oct 21, 08:15 -0500
From: Michael Dorl
Date: 2011 Oct 21, 08:15 -0500
I think it's also due to the fact that very few people are in a position to view the heavens regularly. I'm out side every morning an hour or so before sunrise looking at the Eastern sky. It's amazing how fast the daily scene changes. It seems like only last week that Orion, Mars, and Gemini were in the East; now they are well to the South or overhead. Intellectually I know that the stars move West relative to the Sun about one degree per day or 30 degrees per month and the Moon lags the Sun by 12 degrees per day but it's another thing the see it. I have to keep looking at a sky chart to see what's coming next. Right now Saturn and the Sun are very close, in another Month Saturn will have moved West enough for me to see it in the East.
