Navigating by the Stars

By Kent

Take a left at Exit 21, then a right on 745. Follow it to an old grocery store. It's the second house on the left. Sounds easy; but the right on 745 was barely across the interstate and I missed it. The sun had set some time before. I was now facing a dead end with nowhere to go but into a cow pasture. Sound familiar? Yes, but he's got his GPS or at least a compass, right? Not this time. Was I lost? Well, sort of. I knew the interstate had to be north of my location because I had turned south when I made the left exit but that was about it. What to do? Fortunately, it was a clear night and I was able to navigate by the stars.

The sailors of old used precision instruments such as a sextant to measure angles and determine the altitude of celestial bodies to locate their exact position. When simply traveling the byways, however, such precision isn't really necessary. In fact, all you really need know is how to locate the direction north. In my case I knew I had turned south off the interstate, so as long as I rode north I would eventually get back to where I started. So how do you find which way is north?

Tack a string to a ball and suspend the ball by the string. If the ball represents the earth, then straight above it where your fingers are holding the string will be the North Star. The place you tacked the string to the ball will be the North Pole. Draw a stick figure on the ball so it's facing the string and an outline of the state around the figure as it would appear on a world globe. You now roughly have a 3 dimensional representation of how the earth, the state, the North Star and yourself appear in relation to one another. Spin the ball and you'll see that the stick figure always faces the North Star as well as the North Pole and the northern border of the state. So how do you find the North Star?

The North Star is one of the more bright objects in the sky. It isn't the brightest, so it's easy to mistake for other stars. Fortunately, there is an easy way to find it - you locate the Big Dipper (also known as Ursa Major), a constellation made up of 7 main stars and shaped something like a ladle for dipping water. Imagine holding the handle of the dipper straight out in front of you. Were water to rise out of the dipper in line with furthest edge of the dipper it would flow straight towards the North Star. These two stars that form the furthest edge are called pointer stars because they point to the North Star. About 5 times the distance between the pointer stars out from the dipper you'll find the North Star. So how does this help get you back to the highway?

Think back to your last known location. In my case it was turning south off an east/west interstate. To get back, I needed to reverse my route by going north. When facing north, east is to your right, south to your back and west to your left. When I faced the North Star, I knew the mountains would be to my left, the Atlantic Ocean to my right and the interstate somewhere directly in front of me. The cow pasture, I'm happy to say, was behind me and I was soon on my way back home.

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