The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

We may never know the exact method that the earliest explorers used to find their way, but there is a friendly finger of suspicion that gets pointed regularly at the birds.

Some of the routes used by the pioneers of the Pacific match the migratory routes of the birds exactly.

The route used by the Maori fleet that sailed from Tahiti to New Zealand sometime in the fourteenth century and settled there is the same as that taken by the Long-tailed Cuckoo each September.

I like to think of these earliest navigators. I imagine them gazing up as flocks of birds head uniformly over the horizon in one direction only to repeat the exercised in the opposite direction half a year later. It does not take great leaps of the imagination to deduce that the birds are not doing this great exercise for fun, QED, there must be something in…

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Finding South Using the Stars

In the northern hemisphere Polaris, the North Star, tends to get all the attention when it comes to finding direction using the stars. There is a good reason for this: it is easy to find and is very accurate. In the southern hemisphere the Southern Cross is used to find south and Polaris is not visible. But what about finding south in the northern hemisphere? The easiest thing is still to find Polaris and then look in the opposite direction, but what if we want a method that actually shows us south itself. Here is a nice simple and very unusual method that I invented a few years ago, which you can try this evening.

First you need to find the constellation Leo. It is a nice, big and easy to identify constellation which, unlike some constellations I can think of, looks at least…

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I’m just back from six days in Cairngorms in the Scottish Highlands.

In the foreground of the first picture you can probably make out some indentations in the snow and ice. On first glance these impressions can look like footprints, but they are actually grooves and ‘tongues’ that have been carved and sculpted by the prevailing local winds.

In the the second photo, you can see that in this case they are giving a reliable indication of west/east.

In the book I explain how these tongues are used by indigenous Arctic people, like the Inuit, and how they come to know the different characters of the tongues and therefore which winds, and, critically, which wind directions have formed them.

Happy New Year!

At times like this, I sometimes wonder what the Earth and Sun would say to each other if they could talk. They would watch us celebrating this annual moment at such an arbitrary time…

Sun: I could understand a party at either solstice…

Earth: Yes, or one at either equinox. Would make good sense…

Sun. Quite. But to pick a day about a week after one solstice…

Earth: Very strange.

Sun. Yes. They are a very strange lot.

In this picture of a beech tree in Wiltshire, we can see both moss and lichens thriving in the moist air close to the ground. Water evaporates constantly from the ground and moisture-loving organisms, including mosses, lichens and algae, will be found close to the ground regardless of aspect.

Direction can be found by looking for clues above this area or sometimes by getting to know the lichens…

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Happy Equinox All!

At nine minutes past three this morning, GMT, the sun was overhead the equator.  To celebrate, here are a few things that you may or may not know about the equinox. Only one of them is not true.

The sun will rise due east and set due west for everyone today.

The direction (bearing) of sunrise and sunset changes by more each day at this time of year than at any other time.

On the December side of the equinoxes the sun is always overhead the southern hemisphere, on the June side it is always overhead the northern hemisphere.

Everyone on the planet shares an equal length day and night on the equinoxes.

Satellites that appear stationary and stay over the same spot on the Earth’s surface are called geostationary or geosynchronous and they remain in orbit over the equator. As the sun passes over the equator…

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My thanks to Kevan Hubberd for sending in the idea about using Orion’s Sword as a way of finding south.

Orion’s Sword can be seen in the image to the left as the short vertical line of ‘stars’ under Orion’s Belt.

The Sword does indeed point to a spot on the horizon that is close to due south when the Sword is near vertical (as in this image), but it is a less dependable guide when it is well off-vertical, ie. when it is lower in the sky.

Technical bit for natural navigation zealots only: The reason that the Sword is more accurate when vertical is that it makes a line in the sky that is parallel to the line towards the south celestial pole. When vertical this line intersects with the horizon at a point very close to due south, but at times when the sword is closer…

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Churches are well worth a minute of navigational inquiry. The church itself is likely to show a preference for an east-west alignment, with the altar at the eastern end. But the fact that they are often old buildings that have been left exposed to the elements for long periods, without incessant redecorating or even cleaning, yields other interesting clues in the form of lichens, algae and mosses.

Gravestones tend also to be aligned east-west also, so that the dead are ready when ‘the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised’. Any exposed stone that faces east or west will receive a mixture of sunlight and shade. Consequently they typically display a mixture of lichen types, as in the gravestone in this photo, in the graveyard of St Giles church in the quiet West Sussex village of Graffham.

On this gravestone there are a preponderance of gold and…

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After selling out in under 48 hours on Amazon and elsewhere, the book has been reprinted and is now available again at most shops – online or off. Thank you to all who have bought the book so far; after the thousands of hours that have gone into the research, writing, editing, illustrations, production and launch, it is wonderful to know that it is being read. Thanks for the nice feedback too, a recent favourite:

“I recently bought a copy of your book and loved it – quite remarkable! My brother has stolen it from me yesterday – he’s a Qantas Pilot so I’m guessing it’s somewhere over the Pacific at the moment.”

A couple of days ago Sir Ranulph Fiennes – no stranger to fresh air projects! – described the The Natural Navigator as:

“The perfect book for getting you started on your own adventure.”

It is…

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…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.

The moment a celestial object reaches its highest point in the sky it will be due north or south. Simples! As those meerkats like to say. Well, the principle is beautifully simple, but the practice is a bit more involved. Hence the use of shadow sticks, and sextants for that…

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