Not so handy working from home but quite important when hiking or sailing, navigating using the stars as your guide is both romantic and useful.
This nineties-esque tutorial will show you how to recognize a few constellations and find north just by looking up. As simple as it is, I actually find myself quietly confident about picking out a few stars now.
The Night Sky – [QuietBay]
Quick tip: It doesn’t help the learning experience if you just wave the mouse around waiting for your cursor to change to a hand. Try actually picking a spot before going over to click it.
I like this post but I hope I won’t need these tips when I go to my vacation to Tunisia, Africa this year.
We are going to a 1000 miles trip among the sands of Sahara desert at the beginning of September. 1000 miles for two days with huge Toyota Landcruiser SUVs and camels. That will be fun! :)
Does this work in the southern hemisphere?
Charles, these stars are also visible in the southern hemisphere. However, we can use the Southern Cross to find south.
On it’s longest axis, draw a line that will be approx. parallel to the horizon. Then find the two ‘pointer’ stars that form the base of a triangle [Triangulum Astrale] and draw a line from it’s center until it reaches the line from the SC.
From that point, draw a line down to the horizon and you have south.
http://www.juriepieterse.com/personal/CanoeTripOrangeRiver/Southern_cross_stars_for_direction.htm
i’m not able to open the site! i’m just dumb or is it somehow offline?
Lots of people think that there is nothing more to it than finding the North Star, but there is actually a fine art and a lot of fascinating history. There are methods for finding north, south, east and west. Most of them are very accurate.
Hmm..
i do not know