Following The North Star

Before I begin this blog entry I would like to state that I am aware of how much of a freak I am.
Good. Now that, that's take care of, on to this weeks blog--which I have in fact been fiddling with in my mind throughout the week, even though it may appear last minute:

As I was going through, in my head, different ways in which to discuss how what's out there relates to our lives down here, I remembered one of my favourite episodes of Little Bear, from when I was a kid (If you don't know Little Bear, the title of the show is pretty much self-explanatory). The name of the episode, as it turns out, is "Little Bear's Trip to the Stars". It was a particular scene in the episode that popped into my mind and that is the scene where Father Bear and Little Bear are out on their boat at night, and Father Bear is telling Little Bear about The North Star. "When I want to go home, I find him and he leads me back to you and Mother Bear," explains Father Bear, about the star.

I took a trip home myself, this weekend--my first trip since coming to university--, so I could understand what The North Star must have meant to Father Bear and his family. I decided to do a little research.
As I suspected, The North Star (Or Polaris) is called that because of it's position as projected onto the celestial sphere. Polaris is almost directly above  Earth's North Celestial Pole. I say "almost" because it is about 0.7 degrees away from the pole, so it rotates in a tiny circle, and it only aligns exactly with the pole twice every sidereal day. It won't always be considered a Pole Star, though; Over time (tens of thousands of years), earth's axis of rotation will shift and a different star will then be closer. The coolest thing that I found out in my search, though, is that considering it's distance from earth (approximately 430 light-years) and how bright it is to our eyes, Jim Kaler (a star aficiando) says it has the luminosity of 2500 suns. Can you believe that? Last but not least, in case you were wondering, Father Bear did actually know what he was talking about; way back when, before we were all so high-tech, folks did used to use The North Star (among other things visible in the night sky) to find there way across prairies, deserts and oceans, home to their families.

Here's the episode, if you're interested. It's upside down for copyright reasons, I guess. I just watched it hanging upside down from my bed. Enjoy.

SOURCES

http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/polaris-the-present-day-north-star

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris#Pole_star

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvo31J_JgTM

Introduction

A Walk to Remember, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Lion King; these are just a few of the many films in which one of the major scenes takes place while the characters are looking up at the stars. In each of these movies, the audience is instinctually aware that the moment is a meaningful one, often before the dialogue begins. Obviously we see something when we gaze up at the night sky—something that resonates within us. What is it that we see up there? Well, if you’re looking to find out, you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m not the “answers” type of gal at all. No, I’m a lot better at asking more questions. If everything goes as I intended—which it usually has a weird way of doing and not doing at the same time—this blog will be kind of like one huge meaningful star-gazing session. We’ll see how it goes…