Reading The Stars As A Guide

Humans have been fascinated by the stars and other celestial bodies since the beginning of history.  Great importance was given to the stars by many ancient cultures, some of which even worshipped them.  Eventually, mariners discovered that reading the stars as a guide could help them safely navigate the open oceans.  This led to the invention of ingenious navigational tools that made circumnavigating the globe possible.

To accurately navigate a voyage with the help of the stars, you have to know a lot about constellations, where they are located, and what their movements across the night sky mean about your location.  If you think about the stars like a sort of celestial clock, you can imagine that the North Star, officially named Polaris, is in the dead center of that clock.  The bowls of the Big and Little Dipper constellations follow each other all around this clock, but the North Star always remains in the same position.  The fact that it never deviates has made it an important feature of navigating by the stars for mariners for centuries.  Identifying the North Star and tracking the movements of the Dipper constellations is the basis for all celestial navigation, though there are officially 57 stars that navigators are still formally trained to distinguish and use as guides.

The Ancient Greeks were quite skilled at navigating by reading the movements of the stars, so much so that many of the constellations we know today still have Greek names.  These include Orion the Hunter, Hercules, Draco, and all of the zodiac signs.  Desert tribes in Asia also used the stars to guide their way across vast open stretches of desert; they have also left a modern reminder of their skills as many constellations, such as Rigel, Betelguise, and Vega come from the Arabic language. 

Despite the fact that modern navigation relies on advanced technology like GPS and radar, understanding how to navigate based on the stars is still an important skill.