Star Time

February 20, 2018 A Pugmire

The variety of timepieces designed to measure the minutes of our lives is mind-blowing. Geniuses, pragmatists, and crackpots have developed devices large and small to mark the sun’s journey across the sky. Sundials, hourglasses, calibrated candles, and even elaborate incense clocks regulated daily prayers, work hours, and meal times. An Egyptian pharaoh was buried with a water clock designed around 1500 BC that still intrigues modern engineers with its clever inflows and outflows to gauge time. The Greeks developed their own version of the water clock around 325 BC called clepsydra or “water thief” and used it to time speeches in courts of law.

Over time, smaller versions of clocks began to appear in the hallways of estates, on the mantels of private homes, in the pockets of rich men, and eventually on the wrists of nearly everyone who could afford a Timex, Seiko or Pulsar. The smartwatch is du jour, but who knows what will come next. However, the oldest chronograph still hovers above us, its twinkling face best visible on clear nights and from remote mountaintops. The star clock is a 24-hour clock that runs backwards based on northern stars and requires a little arithmetic to arrive at the correct time, but it never runs down, it never breaks, and can be used by anyone with a somewhat decent view of the night sky.

Here’s how it works.

1 – Locate the Big Dipper

2 – Find the two “pointer stars” which are the two stars where any liquid would run out of the bottom of the dipper.

3 – Follow the straight line of the two “pointer stars” five times the distance between those stars to locate the North Star.

4 – The North Star is the center of the star clock.

5 – The star clock has only one hand, formed by imagining a straight line that runs from the North Star and through the two “pointer stars” in the Big Dipper.

6 – The clock moves counterclockwise and measures 24 positions. At the top is midnight. The position one quarter to the left which would be 9:00 on a traditional clock is actually 6:00 AM on the star clock. The bottom of the clock is 12:00 noon.

7 – The star clock also runs 4 minutes faster than the sun each day, so it requires some math to get at an accurate reading.

8 – On March 7^th of each year the clock tells the correct time. For every week after March 7 subtract half an hour and for every week before March 7 add half an hour.

9 – If it is Daylight Savings Time add one more hour.

Want to try it?

Suppose today is September 14^th. The pointer stars in the Big Dipper are in a straight line below the North Star. This would be noon on the star clock. However, the clock reading is fast by one-half hour for six months and one week, or twelve and a half hours. Moving back twelve and a half hours from noon puts the time at 11:30 p.m. Considering that September is still in Daylight Savings Time one hour is added back onto the clock. This makes the time 12:30 a.m. or half past midnight on a traditional clock.

As soon as it’s dark enough, go outside and determine the position of the North Star and the pointer stars in the Big Dipper. Check the date. Do the math. Does the time on the star clock match the time on your wristwatch or smartphone? They should be close.

Our reasons for measuring time have evolved over the years, but mostly it’s been for the purposes of coordination, for gathering together at the intersection of a specific time and place. It’s kind of a cosmic “You Are Here” sign. There are a gazillion ways to measure time, to subdivide it and record it, but perhaps what matters most is what we do with it as the stars slide around the great circle of the sky above us.

And for those worried about the end of time, Charles Schulz offered reassurance through the ever sensible Marcie in his June 13, 1980 cartoon strip. “I promise there’ll be a tomorrow, sir,” Marcie says, “in fact, it’s already tomorrow in Australia.”

See you there.

Additional Reading

The Stars: A New Way to See Them by H.A. Rey

Star Clock

How to Tell Time with Stars?

Astronaut’s Playlist: 134 Songs About Stars, Planets, and Space

Myths, Legends, and Lore

Fun Facts

The name of the biggest known star is UY Scuti. Other stars are brighter and denser, but UY Scuti is somewhere between 1,054,378,000 and 1,321,450,000 miles in size, which is about 1,700 times larger than our Sun’s radius and 21 billion times the volume.
Before UY Scuti was discovered, Betelgeuse, NML Cygni and VY Canis Majoris were considered the largest stars. VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant star located in the constellation Canis Major with a solar radii of 2600. It is also one of the brightest.
Stars are different colors depending on their temperature. The hottest are blue, then white, yellow, orange, red and brown.
Our sun is a green-blue star even though it looks white or yellow looking up from the Earth.
On a clear night you can see as far as 19 quadrillion miles up into the sky. Deneb in Cygnus is the farthest and brightest star you can see in fall and winter.

Quotables

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
- William Shakespeare

“Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.”
- Nora Roberts

“Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.”
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

“A philosopher once asked, “Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?” Pointless, really…”Do the stars gaze back?” Now, that’s a question.”
- Neil Gaiman, Stardust

Poet’s Corner

Flying at Night

“Above us stars, beneath us constellations,

Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake falling water …”
– Ted Kooser

Stars

Stars are falling, beaming down.

On the ground, is where I’m found.
On a summer’s night, some stars may fall,
But I am here to catch them all.
Looking at the stars above, I can see some stars of love.
Some are good,
Some are kind.
Some are yours,
And some are mine.
Oh! Stars above please shine your light,
So that I may find my way, tonight.

-Stephanie M. Mayle

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired, and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

-Walt Whitman, 1865 (TOAOAL-II, PP 821-822)

Try This:

Somewhere in our school days we are introduced to the legends behind the star constellations. On a clear night, choose your own cluster of stars and create a story about what they’re doing up there above you and how they got there.
Make “Galaxy” cookies. Using your favorite sugar cookie recipe, cut out star shapes. Frost with a white icing, then while the icing is still wet, dip toothpicks in colored frosting and swirl through the white frosting to make a cosmic design. Combinations of blues and purples, or pink and yellow, or blue and green make attractive designs.

Icing Recipe:

1 Cup powdered sugar

2 teaspoons milk

2 teaspoons light corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon vanilla or almond flavoring

Coloring

(for those sensitive to dyes, try crushed raspberry juice, grape juice, blueberry juice, or a tiny bit of turmeric in water for yellow.)

– World’s highest motorable road – Umling La or Umlingla Pass in Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir – at 5,883 meters or 19,300 feet above sea level.

– World’s lowest motorable road – Route 90 in Israel passing along the western bank of the Dead Sea at a -423 meters or 1,388 feet below sea level (Note: there are lower elevations but this is considered the lowest motorable road.)

– Straightest Road – The Eyre Highway in Australia that is a 90 mile stretch of road without a single curve – which pales beside highway 10 in Saudi Arabia – 140 miles of straight blacktop with only a slight bend near the Emirati border.

– Most crooked road – Lombard Street in San Francisco still retains that honor according to the Guinness World Record Book – it’s 8 hairpin turns equal 1,440 degrees of curved road in only 400 meters, and it has a mandatory 5 mph speed limit.

– Longest road – the Pan American Highway that links both North and South American except for a 100 km distance called the Darien Gap – the approximate length is 48,000 km or 29,826 miles.

– Oldest road – a stone paved road in a desolate corner of Egypt linking a basalt quarry to a waterway for transportation – estimates put it at 4,600 years old.

The Roads

I stand on the windy uplands among the hills of Down
With all the world spread out beneath, meadow and sea and town,
And ploughlands on the far-off hills that glow with friendly brown.

And ever across the rolling land to the far horizon line,
Where the blue hills border the misty west, I see the white roads twine,
The rare roads and the fair roads that call this heart of mine.

I see them dip in the valleys and vanish and rise and bend
From shadowy dell to windswept fell, and still to the West they wend,
And over the cold blue ridge at last to the great world’s uttermost end.

And the call of the roads is upon me, a desire in my spirit has grown
To wander forth in the highways, ‘twixt earth and sky alone,
And seek for the lands no foot has trod and the seas no sail has known:

For the lands to the west of the evening and east of the morning’s birth,
Where the gods unseen in their valleys green are glad at the ends of the earth
And fear no morrow to bring them sorrow, nor night to quench their mirth.

C.S.Lewis

Create a backyard treasure hunt using clues that require compass readings or rely on cardinal directions – north, south , east, west.

To make a map for players to follow print out an online Google maps picture of your yard (or park – wherever you choose to do this). Use a colored pen to mark compass points on the map so that players can orient themselves to their surroundings.

Keep instructions simple.

You can create a map for each player, leading to an individual treasure, or divide players up into teams for a team treasure hunt.

Players can use a compass, a GPS device, or phone to point them in the right direction, or if they are especially observant, their own observations of the sun.

When the treasure has been found, challenge the players to create their own treasure map. Trade maps with another player and follow the clues to a new treasure.

Favorite treasures at our house have been edibles packed in Ziplocs, but a close second was a plaster of paris turtle my mother painted in garish colors that could be buried and reburied a hundred times without altering its appearance.