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A diagram of a typical nautical sextant, a tool used in celestial navigation to measure the angle between two objects viewed by means of its optical sight. Celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation, is the practice of position fixing using stars and other celestial bodies that enables a navigator to accurately determine their actual current physical position in space or on the ...
The Sea or the Water is an area of the sky in which many water-related, and few land-related, constellations occur. This may be because the Sun passed through this part of the sky during the rainy season. [1] Most of these constellations are named by Ptolemy: Aquarius the Water-bearer; Capricornus the Sea-goat; Cetus the Whale; Delphinus the ...
In astronomy, the fixed stars (Latin: stellae fixae) are the luminary points, mainly stars, that appear not to move relative to one another against the darkness of the night sky in the background. This is in contrast to those lights visible to naked eye , namely planets and comets , that appear to move slowly among those "fixed" stars.
Under ideal conditions, onlookers can count as many as 100 shooting stars per hour, but hourly rates will not be quite as high this year as a nearly full moon will shine bright on the night of Aug ...
Stars in the night sky. The first star catalogue in Greek astronomy was created by Aristillus in approximately 300 BC, with the help of Timocharis. [10] The star catalog of Hipparchus (2nd century BC) included 1,020 stars, and was used to assemble Ptolemy's star catalogue. [11] Hipparchus is known for the discovery of the first recorded nova ...
A sight (or measure) of the angle between the Sun, a star, or a planet, and the horizon is done with the 'star telescope' fitted to the sextant using a visible horizon. On a vessel at sea even on misty days a sight may be done from a low height above the water to give a more definite, better horizon. Navigators hold the sextant by its handle in ...
Paranal Observatory nights. [3] The concept of noctcaelador tackles the aesthetic perception of the night sky. [4]Depending on local sky cloud cover, pollution, humidity, and light pollution levels, the stars visible to the unaided naked eye appear as hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of white pinpoints of light in an otherwise near black sky together with some faint nebulae or clouds ...
Star trails captured during a total lunar eclipse. In astronomy, diurnal motion (from Latin diurnus 'daily', from Latin diēs 'day') is the apparent motion of celestial objects (e.g. the Sun and stars) around Earth, or more precisely around the two celestial poles, over the course of one day.