Thursday, February 12, 2009

North Star


I just know from The Patriot movie
that North star is the only one star which never move
strong, guide, and firm
how beautiful it is!
here's a lil bit information about North star:

The North Star is the prominent pole star that lies closest in the sky to the north celestial pole and which appears (approximately) directly overhead to an observer at the Earth's North Pole; currently, this is Polaris. The North Star lies about two-thirds of a degree from the pole at the end of the "bob" of the Little Dipper asterism in the constellation Ursa Minor. Polaris has a visual magnitude of 1.97 (second magnitude). (Some people mistakenly think that Polaris is the brightest star in the night sky. This title belongs to Sirius, and there are dozens of other stars also brighter than Polaris.) A common method for locating Polaris in the sky is to use the "pointer stars" which are the two stars furthest from the "handle" of the easily spotted Big Dipper (part of the constellation Ursa Major).

The North Star has historically been used for navigation, both to find the direction of north and to determine latitude. It has been used by lost campers to find their way back home. It always appears due north in the sky, and the angle it makes with respect to the horizon is equal to the latitude of the observer. The North Star is visible only in northern hemisphere skies and so cannot be used for navigation south of the equator.

Currently, there is no South Star as useful as Polaris; the faint star σ Octantis is closest to the south celestial pole. However, the constellation Crux, the Southern Cross, points towards the pole.

A similar concept applies to other planets.

quoted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Star

p.s: when i searched word star in any other language, i found this, Stella means star in Italian

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