I still use stars in the night sky for navigation once in a while. As another comment noted, in many settled places in the United States there are so many outdo

I still use stars in the night sky for navigation once in a while. As another comment noted, in many settled places in the United States there are so many outdoor electric lights that it is hard to get a good view of the night sky, but some of the brightest stars are visible even where I live, where yard lights abound. (My bigger problem with viewing the sky is cloud cover at many times of the year.) I live at the 45th parallel of north latitude, so the pole star (Polaris), which I can easily find from the pointer stars on the Big Dipper[1], provides a convenient guide to which way is north, at a halfway-up angle from the horizon. In winter, the seasonal constellation Orion[2] is very distinctive, and depending on the exact date in the season and the time of the day is a reasonably good guide to which way is south. I once used Orion to navigate my way across an unfamiliar town when I took the wrong bus to an evening appointment and found out that the last bus stop on the line still left me with a two-mile walk to where I needed to go. These days I usually drive to evening appointments in the winter, but the stars are still a good guide which way I am driving on twisting exurban roads. Winter is better for seeing stars here both because the hours of darkness are longer and because the air is drier in winter (especially on cold nights) and there is less cloud cover hiding the stars from seeing. [1] http://www.fortworthastro.com/beginner2.html http://www.fortworthastro.com/beginner2.html [2] http://www.space.com/16659-constellation-orion.html http://www.space.com/16659-constellation-orion.html