"Pole star" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... either elongation is off the meridian, it will be necessary to determine the angle at the place of observation to be turned off on the instrument to bring it into the meridian. This angle, called the azimuth of the pole star, varies with the latitude of the observer, as will appear from Fig 2, and hence its value must be computed for different latitudes, and the surveyor must know his latitude before he can apply it. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... purposes, the constellation of the Lesser Bear. But it is probable, that at the period when they first applied this constellation, which is supposed to be about 1250 years before Christ, they did not fix on the star at the extremity of the tail of Ursa Minor, which is what we call the Pole Star; for by a Memoir of the Academy of Sciences (1733. p. 440.) it is shewn, that it would at that period be too distant to serve the purpose of guiding ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... achievement. Cochrane was not overwhelmed by the achievement itself, though less than eighteen hours since the ship and all its company had been aground on Luna, and now they were landed on a new world twice as far from Earth as the Pole Star. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to thousands of years; for the distance which separates them is enormous, and, even when with a powerful telescope it is indicated only by a narrow dark line, amounts to hundreds of millions of miles. The Pole Star itself is double. Andromeda is triple, with perhaps a fourth dark and therefore invisible companion. These dark bodies have a special interest, since it is impossible not to ask ourselves whether some at any rate of them may not be inhabited. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... as I can I will me haste, To telle you all the descriptioun. Depainted be the walles up and down Of hunting and of shamefast chastity. There saw I how woful Calistope, When that Dian aggrieved was with her, Was turned from a woman to a bear, And after was she made the lodestar*: *pole star Thus was it painted, I can say no far*; *farther Her son is eke a star as men may see. There saw I Dane turn'd into a tree, I meane not the goddess Diane, But Peneus' daughter, which that hight Dane. There saw I Actaeon an hart y-maked*, *made ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer |
