Your science teacher may have told you that Copernicus discovered the Earth was round. However, the Greeks used the North Star to make the same discovery!
The Greeks had it figured out that the earth was round. How did they manage it? Learn more on this Moment of Science.
A sextant is a hand-held gadget that looks like the outline of a large piece of pizza. It is essential for navigation since it helps determine degrees of latitude, telling sailors how far to the north or south of the equator they are located.
The North Star is the brightest star in the constellation known as the Little Dipper. It is called the North Star because of the special position it occupies relative to the earth’s axis. If you were to stay up all night gazing at the stars, you’d slowly see them revolve around a point in the sky known as the North Celestial Pole.