23 February 2009 by Tristan Gooley
There are many things that I am excited about discovering in the Sahara and some of these are what Donald Rumsfeld might have called the ‘known unknowns’. Another thirty degrees of night sky will be offered up, including such important treats as Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky (after Sirius). It is impossible to see under any conditions from Britain.
Although I must not waste the precious liquid, it is also mouth-watering to try to imagine some of the ‘unknown unknowns’. I will be keeping the senses fully alert and hoping to catch the smell of oases on the wind, but perhaps there will be some surprises too. R. A. Bagnold, a desert expert and scientific pioneer, once found a water hole by following the smell of a single camel he picked up from eight miles away. My method of travel makes it very unlikely that I will…
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Tags: canopus, desert expert. smell of oases, R. A. Bagnold, second brightest star |
08 October 2008 by Tristan Gooley
A good morning for the stars, but a bit damper in West Sussex than camels would like. Still, no reason not to enjoy an excerpt from Clinton Bailey’s 1974 article about Bedouin Star Lore:
Even in the late twentieth century many Bedouin are familiar with Polaris
(called al-Jidi) and Canopus (Suhayl), the two stars that indicate the directions
north and south. When a Bedouin, composing a poem, wanted to relate that
he was travelling south-east, for example, he said:
‘Ahutt al-Jidi ‘ald wirk il-matiyyah
W’adhrT naharhd ‘an Suhayl al-yimain’
‘I put Polaris on the thigh of my mount
While shielding her throat from Canopus south ‘.
Tags: bedouin star lore, canopus, clinton bailey, polaris, west sussex |
