After you read this sentence
I encourage you to close your eyes, breathe slowly and imagine floating over a great expanse, outstretched above, is a realm of illuminated speckles. Tonight, this is our classroom and our chapel.
“The world can only appear monochromatic to those who persist in interpreting what they experience through the lens of a single cultural paradigm, their own. For those with the eyes to see and the heart to feel, it remains a rich and complex topography of the spirit”
- Davis, Wade. The Wayfinders. Ontario, House of Anansi Press Inc, 2009. P.6
Aloha, Chris here!
Today I want to dive into a little of what I have been learning of the night sky. To begin, I want to express that this is a fraction of my notes as a student, everything here I encourage you to fact check and go outside to see for yourself. If you live in an area that is blocked with light pollution, here is an invite to run far away for a night to experience the open sky :)
Understanding astronomical terms can be intimidating by their scholarly names. For myself, comprehending the night sky as a map began to make a little more sense as I explored the concepts through drawing them. Amongst the myriad of studies, the two that have inspired me to share about today is declination and the celestial meridian.
Imagine the equator . . . a line (0° of latitude) circling around the widest point of the globe. As you may know, every degree (60 nautical miles) is recorded as °N if you travel north and °S if you travel south of this line
Now imagine our earth wrapped inside a huge transparent ball with this line (the Equator) drawn on it . . . OK now imagine the ball getting inflated so that our earth is a tiny copy floating inside of it . . .
The line we drew on that giant transparent inflated ball is what we call the Celestial Equator, a heavenly reflection of our earthly equator. Any distance a star is north or south of that celestial equator is called Declination. Declination is recorded with ( - ) if a star is south of that line, and ( + ) if the star is north of that line; the same way that we record latitude on earth!
Now that you have a visual of this, imagine a star that you recognize . . . take for example the star we named our canoe after, ‘A‘ā. This bright star has a declination of -16°42 minutes and 58 seconds. In Tahiti (17°65S) ‘A‘ā passes almost directly overhead.
This all began to make sense the day I departed from Tahiti with my friend Sam. As we headed home to Hawai’i, I observed ‘A‘ā night after night, she sank lower and lower as we progressed northward. To simplify, when the star passes overhead, your latitude will be similar to that stars declination. If you were to look up night after night and identify a star that passes overhead, that’s kind of like the celestial coordinates of home!
Brain exercise . . . If the north star doesn’t move because it is observed directly over the north pole, what is its declination?
‘Ae! +90.'
If the star Mintaka in Orions belt has the declination of -0 . . . where on earth does it pass directly overhead?
‘Ae! The 13 countries on the equator, eg. Maldives, Ecuador, Kiribati, Indonesia etc.
This study nonetheless brings to light to the brilliance of the ancient Micronesian / Polynesian canoe navigators who memorized all the stars that passed over tiny islands beyond the horizon. Consider, that this was before almanacs of recorded astronomy and scholarly measurements . . . They knew the way to plentiful reefs and new lands, and they new how to get back home. The power of looking up in wonder is an incredible journey. I often think about this when I take a visit to the grocery store, in the old islander age these inter island voyages were essential for life. Failure implied death which created generations of dreamers who viewed successful voyages as the only way to stay alive. What are the things we are currently facing in our world that need courageous dreamers to embark on? God? Societal peace? Organic food?
Mau Piailug,
“To navigate you must be brave and to be brave you must remember. If I am brave, it is because I remember the words of my fathers.”
- Thomas, Stephen D. The Last Navigator. New York, 2009. P85
The second of our two studies, is the celestial meridian. Now, imagine a line running from the north pole, to the south pole. Do you remember the huge inflated ball concept? Yes, yes now imagine that line running from N pole to S pole, copied on that huge inflated ball. That imaginary line is called the Celestial Meridian. A line drawn in the sky, from the north pole, over your head to the south pole.
As we discussed stars passing overhead before . . . How do we know when they are at their tallest ascent (formally known as Zenith)? It is nearly impossible to be sure at only a few observations.
There once was an adventurous young man named Nainoa Thompson (now, Uncle Nainoa) who studied with an astronomer named Will Kyselka. In the book, ‘An Ocean In Mind’, Uncle Nainoa spent many sleepless nights both observing the heavens naturally and utilizing the planetarium to observe the heavens more scientifically. He noted what he called Meridional Star Pairs, that is when two stars happen to stand vertically above each other as they reach their highest ascent.
When this occurs, the observer is able to draw an imaginary line to the horizon and determine where true north or south lies.
He made the exciting discovery one night of hanaiakamalama (the southern cross) not only giving a clear line to south, but marking the latitude of Hawai’i
“A good meridional pair is the staff of the Southern Cross. When the lower star (Acrux) is as high above the horizon as it is beneath the upper star (Gacrux), the observer is at 21°N the latitude of Hawai’i”
- Kyselka, Will. An Ocean In Mind. Kolowalu, 1987. P44
Learning this inspired me to note more observations during my adventures, and has led me down the exhilarating path of learning the night sky. I feel like a little kid again, seeing twinkles of light in a whole new way. These studies not only required a little bit of calculation, but a lot of envisioning a bigger picture. The mental journey is nonetheless a wholesome voyage. Stars conjure a deep metaphorical importance; a tilt of your chin toward the sky and accepting our temporary existence with the sudden enrapture of being alive. As a young boy in the desert realized,
“In order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens. God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens that he left you.”
- Coelho, Paulo. The Alchemist. Rocco, 1993. P29
If there is anything that I covered in this brief introduction that seems an error or that you would like to add to, please reach out! Gratitude from one student to the next.
Till next time,
Chris
Mahalo ‘Īo, for our breath of life to experience and learn these things. Mahalo to Sam, for letting me partake in that wonderful first voyage of Kealaikahiki. And a special Mahalo to the recorded Kumu who have shared this knowledge so that I can partake as a humble student; Tupaia, Mau, Lewis, Kyselka, Uncle Nainoa and so many more great explorers and anthropologists.