[amsat-bb] Re: Dont loose the north

["Tom Clark, K3IO" <k3io@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

With all this discussion about Polaris, I thought you might find a
couple of photos I took back in 2002 that shows you that the earth's
spin axis is close to, but not precisely at Alpha UMi. Take a look at
http://www.pbase.com/tomcat/aurora. The right-hand picture
(http://www.pbase.com/tomcat/image/5186538)shows how the stars move over
about 4 hours. The star nearest the center of the arcs is Polaris; if it
was precisely at the pole, then the arc would have been a point.

You may also find the animated GIF photos of a (relatively) rare
low-latitude (Maryland) Aurora interesting.

73 & Happy New Year -- Tom
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