NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2024 Dec 19, 10:13 -0800
Where’s the place? “Upon the Heath of course” say The Teddies, but which Heath?
What have we got? Purple headed thistles??, so possibly McBeth’s Hillock between Forres and Nairn, but that would be too ‘corny’. Besides, she’s not swatting the midges away. Achilla millefolium (Common Yarrow) grows in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, so that doesn’t rule out North America.
The Teddies think Double Double is probably referring to Epsilon Lyrae, so the nearest bright star is Vega. Checking the sextant eyepiece views in aira24 shows identifying Vega is as good place to start as any, but which of the constellations in the photograph is Lyra?
They think the brightest groups are to the left and level with the girl’s right hand and to the right level with the girl’s left ear. The one on the left looks promising if not perfect. It’s a clear night and it’ll be dark shortly with Vega in the west, so maybe we can get the X12 glasses on it. The nearest other decent stars are Deneb and Eltanin. They don’t recall having ever selected to shoot Eltanin before so maybe that’s worth a look. They say if you took a line up across Wiggly 1 Lyr and XY Lyr you would eventually come to Eltanin to the left and Rastaban on the right. They are space travelers after all, but then again; they’re only teddies, so they might be confused. I asked them what about the stars way to the right of the girl’s ear, but they just said “Good question”. If they’d only let me back into the Astrovan, I’d sort it out straight away for them, but so far they’re refusing to budge. DaveP