STARS
THE ORIGINAL GPS.Before Hema was a thing, old time explorers
driving ships or camel trains, navigated through
oceans and deserts by using the position of stars
as their anchored reference points.
It’s a basic skill not needed these days, but its
simplicity puts everything into perspective. That we
are on a rock spinning around one star. And that we
can rely on all those other stars to follow the same
paths throughout the seasons.
Early Aussie explorers knew that the night sky
moved each month, in a consistent fashion that
could be relied upon.Because of the trajectory of the earth, they knew
that the position of the stars in the sky changed,
and they allowed for this by recognizing that stars
rise about four minutes earlier than the previous
day. Which mightn’t sound like that much, but over
the course of a month, it will change by two hours.
What this means for us, is that we can catch a
completely different show every time we take off
out to the tracks. The most noticeable differences
are that during summer we look squarely into the
‘Saucepan’ (Orion), and in winter we get a eyeful of
the ‘Scorpion Tail’ (Scorpius).076 | 4WDTouringAustralia