3 ms·
Leave it to hacker news comments to summarize something I thought was black magic into paragraph that I completely understand. Not sure I could replicate it bu
by MarkMarine 4y ago
Leave it to hacker news comments to summarize something I thought was black magic into paragraph that I completely understand. Not sure I could replicate it but it makes sense to me now.
So, this has been around a lot longer than we had accurate star charts that actually understood the motion of planets and stars, right? Do you have any summary of how these charts that describe where a certain star is above on the earth on a specific day came from before we understood the motions of the stars?
- gmiller123456 4y agoI'm not too familiar with the ancient history of it, but it requires an accurate clock. There's a good book called "Longitude" that goes over the development of the clock that could be used at sea. But, before then, it was well known that you could measure the altitude of Polaris to get your latitude, so ships would sail to the latitude they wanted, then turn East or West. We've had accurate star charts for a long time, Hipparcus had made accurate enough measurements to detect the Earth's slow 26,000 year wobble called precession. The key piece missing for navigation was a clock.