Seeing stars: a lesson in star navigation offered tonight

After public interest came about following constellation programs at Green Valley State Park, naturalist Hannah Kendrick will be holding lessons on star navigation 9 p.m. tonight at the park beach. Kendrick said getting a grasp of star navigation comes down to finding the north and south stars.

“I will be teaching people how to find the north star, that’s by using the dipper, and after we’ve done that, we’ll talk about how to find south as well, which is using a couple different constellations,” Kendrick said. “We’ll also discuss the historic usage for stars for navigation, which goes back centuries. Hopefully it’s going to be pretty nice so we can see the stars and we’ll discuss different constellations and different clusters of stars that historically humans have used for navigation.”

Despite the program being held at Green Valley, star navigation is more prevalently used in the sailing community and cultures outside the midwest.

“It’s not very common,” Kendrick said. “I think it’s usually customary for people who just have a hobby are out sailing, it’s typical of them to use the stars to navigate, but it is not very common anymore. There are certain cultures, though, that do rely heavily on using the stars, cultures that are from the coastal regions, but around here, not very common.”

Kendrick said one of the biggest hurdles of acquiring star navigation skills is being able to distinguish the big dipper from the little dipper, however, she also said star navigation gets much easier from there.

“Once you know your constellations, it’s not difficult at all.”

While it’s not uncommon for people to find the big dipper, Kendrick said sometimes people will confuse it for the little dipper.

“You can see the cup of the big dipper and the two stars at the end of it point directly to the stars that end in the handle of the little dipper,” she said.

For more information call Hannah Kendrick at 641-781-8042.