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Asked by anawesomepersonlol to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 24 Jun 2013.
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Sam Geen answered on 24 Jun 2013:
The stars usually don’t move very much. Of course stars do move, but they move very very slowly compared to a person’s lifetime. So they’re good for navigating if you don’t have GPS or other equipment. You can find a star called the North Star, or Polaris, which you find by following the bowl of the Big Dipper.
In fact, which star points north has changed over history due to very small changes in Earth’s orbit or rotation, and the stars moving. In 3000BC it used to be a star called Thuban, which is much dimmer than Polaris and is usually invisible from light pollution nowadays.
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Claire Lee answered on 24 Jun 2013:
Also, you can tell how far north or south you are by what stars are in the sky and at what angle. You can tell the time of year by what stars are above your head at a given time. And, since the earth rotates, you can tell what time it is at night by how the stars have shifted since sunset 🙂
In the Southern Hemisphere we don’t have a single star, we have to do some geometry with the Southern Cross, which is fine for normal walking, but difficult if you’re trying to perfectly align a telescope!
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Matthew Pankhurst answered on 25 Jun 2013:
To add to the excellent answers, stars have been used for thousands of years by traveller and sailors to work out where they are – if you know how to read them (and most people don’t – inclouding me) it’s a bit like having google maps but without a computer! Awesome!
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