NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Polar Sticks in "The Barefoot Navigator"
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2025 Feb 27, 15:23 -0800
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2025 Feb 27, 15:23 -0800
And remember that a navigator a thousand years ago might not have worried about Polaris since it was 6° from the celestial pole in 1000 AD. Why not use Capella? Or for something a little more polar, try a couple of the stars in the Big Dipper or in Cassiopeia.
We wait for any recognizable circumpolar star to reach its lowest altitude below the pole. Some notch on our stick is marked "star x, good for Greenland here". And the rest is easy. Incidentally, the low visibility of the horizon in the middle of the night is somewhat offset by much longer twilight and also by the aurora borealis (nature's "light pollution").
Frank Reed
