The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

After an enjoyable private course on Friday – we finished standing in a field looking at Orion, the Plough, Cassiopeia and, of course, Polaris – it was time for a family outing to West Wittering beach early on Saturday.

I adore the Witterings in winter, the barbecue and beach towels may have to stay at home but it is invigorating to get blown along on miles of abandoned sand. In between games of hide and seek amongst the beach huts, games of football on the sticky sand and races to pieces of seaweed, I noticed some interesting patterns in the sand.

This photo shows how there tend to be broad ripples parallel to the coastline itself, but closer inspection reveals more subtle patterns and these can be used to decipher the action of the water and therefore yield more clues to direction. The ripples of sand fan out over the small hills that…

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Tristan


I managed to rope in a friend at the end of an evening’s BBQ and together we plumb-bobbed Polaris, set out two posts and then strung a string between them. We checked with a compass and, despite the evening’s beers, we were actually almost spot on!

The next day we checked the shadow at 1.00 (12 noon GMT) and found this lined up on our string. Impressed or what!

Richard

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Hi Richard,

I can see I’m going to need to come up with some sort of merit/badge/star system just to complete the back to school experience!

A link that I will have mentioned on the day is here:

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/AltAz.php

If you plug in your latitude and longitude, it will give you the altitude and azimuth of the sun (or moon) for a whole day by GMT. Due south is often very close to clock midday, but it can wander off it depending on your longitude and because of something called…

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My thanks to Richard, who sent in this picture from a lad’s walking weekend along the Jurassic Coast. He was given a private course as a birthday present and was on the lookout for natural signposts. Wind and trees don’t scream direction a lot louder than this. He also spotted sand blown only over the northeastern edge of a horse training area and found Polaris, but then struggled to see it from the inside of a pub.

This just in…

Tristan

Many thanks for a fantastic day yesterday.

I learnt so much and was stimulated also by the opportunity to apply what I did know to a new “problem solving” challenge! I checked out the moon last night and located Polaris and was quite comfortable that it was NOT directly above my head as I always imagined it might be! (I do need to re-set the weathervane and I think I’ll use Polaris to do this!)

The principles you taught will add another layer to my enjoyment and connection with the great outdoors. So rather than just walking through it and looking at the views I’ll be able to read more off it. Natural Navigation is a key to unlocking a fascinating text in the Earth’s rich library.

Thanks again for a very inspiring day – just off to check the lichen and moss on the trees in the garden!

Richard W (Cambridge)

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Northern natural navigators look at the Plough pretty much every night that is not completely overcast and yet we could argue that it gets overlooked. As the best known signpost for the North Star, our eyes tend to jump to its seven stars, line them up and then move on from the pointers to that friendly star, Polaris.

This morning I thought it would be nice to give it credit for being more than just a signpost. It is Ursa Major, the Great Bear and has featured in literature and art for as long as words and pictures have been recorded. Homer, Shakespeare and Van Gogh have given it the time of day.

The first thing we can do if we want to give it a second thought is to look to the middle star in the Plough (saucepan to some) handle. This can be seen clearly as a double star. It…

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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 ‘.

Last night was one of those occasions where the moon was the natural navigator’s best option. At about 10pm the sky overhead was overcast with broken clouds down to nearer the horizon. The western glow of dusk was gone and the only objects that could be seen were Jupiter and the three-quarter Moon. The cloud meant no Polaris, and the bright moon in the only patch of open sky blotted out the other stars. The Moon plays hard to get at first but on nights like this it can be a very good friend.