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It is designated α Ursae Minoris (Latinized to Alpha Ursae Minoris) and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude that fluctuates around 1.98, [ 3 ] it is the brightest star in the constellation and is readily visible to the naked eye at night. [ 16 ]
will become the North Star at about 9,800 CE Delta Cygni: Fawaris: 2.87: Cygnus: within 3° will become the North Star at about 11,250 CE Alpha Lyrae: Vega: 0.026: Lyra: within 5° used to be the North Star at about 12,000 BCE and will become the North Star at 14,500 CE Iota Herculis: 3.75: Hercules: within 4° used to be the North Star at ...
In about 5,500 years, the pole will have moved near the position of the star Alderamin (Alpha Cephei), and in 12,000 years, Vega (Alpha Lyrae) will become the "North Star", though it will be about six degrees from the true north celestial pole. To find Polaris, from a point in the Northern Hemisphere, face north and locate the Big Dipper ...
The Earth's axis of rotation remains effectively stationary throughout the year. Thus, with knowledge of the current time and geographical position in the form of latitude and longitude, which are set on the instrument using dials, an astrocompass can be sighted onto any astronomical object with a known position to give an extremely accurate reading.
Navigators often use star charts to identify a star by its position relative to other stars. References like the Nautical Almanac and The American Practical Navigator provide four star charts, covering different portions of the celestial sphere. Two of these charts are azimuthal equidistant projections of the north and south poles. The other ...
Surveyors can locate true north by viewing the Sun or other astronomical objects like stars or the Moon, which have a direction from any given point on the surface of the Earth. It can be calculated precisely for a given date and time, and is not influenced by local variations in the magnetic field due to local deposits of minerals such as iron ...
True south is the direction opposite to the true north. It is important to make the distinction from magnetic north, which points towards an ever changing location close to the True North Pole determined Earth's magnetic field. Due to fundamental limitations in map projection, true north also differs from the grid north which is marked by the ...
The star is the point of interest, the reference plane is the local area (e.g. a circular area with a 5 km radius at sea level) around an observer on Earth's surface, and the reference vector points to true north. The azimuth is the angle between the north vector and the star's vector on the horizontal plane. [2]