My thanks to William Goble for bringing my attention to a extraordinary piece of navigation history.
Although standard practice in aerial navigation at the time, it is now remarkable to consider that the most powerful weapon in the history of warfare was guided using the stars. The Enola Gay dropped its atomic bomb payload on Hiroshima after an 1800 mile flight where the aircraft’s position was checked using the stars. From the Guardian article:
‘Van Kirk’s role was navigator: “We did things the old-fashioned way: celestial navigation, telling your position by the stars. We had a dome up top of the plane to sit up in and shoot the stars with a bubble sextant.”
The full article can be read in the Guardian Online.
…and he was high in the sky, which reminded me of one of the simplest and most beautiful of natural navigational celestial techiques. Orion is a great help in finding East or West, but there is a method for finding direction that works even if you have no idea what object you are looking at in the sky. It takes time to apply accurately, but it can be used anywhere in the world and applies to all the stars, the moon, the sun and all the planets – even if you have no idea which one you are looking at.
What a difference an hour makes, I took this photo only one hour later than yesterday’s. Venus was still visible to the naked eye, but being drowned out by the minute as the morning’s twilight becomes dawn itself. Twilight is a hugely important time for celestial navigators as it is the only time that both the stars and horizon are visible. 