08-15-2017, 09:01 AM
even 10 seconds of googling shows your statement to be just plain hogwash
Hogwash is a pretty strong statement; essentially means completely without merit. Just glanced at the website; it didn't really shift my opinion much. Still believe PR is the dominant component of the astronomy-wayfinding link.
What might we navigate with TMT?
IMO, and I concede to having minimal astronomy background, the field is almost exclusively investigative. Navigation, if one can call it that, would be observing with increasingly powerful telescopes distant regions not previously visible (or perceivable with the multitude of sensors you folks use.)
Navigation is a weak term for this. I would call it observation and investigation. And OK exploration.
Did the Polynesian observations of the nighttime skies put them in the position--over the centuries--of having to keep track of significant amounts of new phenomenon?
Just did a tiny bit of astronomy 101. Primary moving objects visible to naked eye are planets, moons, comets. Stars stay in place but "the stars do move slowly over the course of the night. The entire sky rotates about the point in the sky where you can find the North Star. " Happy to be corrected if I am wrong here.
Upshot: the bulk of what the wayfinders observed over the centuries in the sky remained largely the same. Hence their endeavors were not investigative and explorative but memorization and using that memory map in direction finding (navigation), IMO. Am I still wrong?
Hogwash is a pretty strong statement; essentially means completely without merit. Just glanced at the website; it didn't really shift my opinion much. Still believe PR is the dominant component of the astronomy-wayfinding link.
What might we navigate with TMT?
IMO, and I concede to having minimal astronomy background, the field is almost exclusively investigative. Navigation, if one can call it that, would be observing with increasingly powerful telescopes distant regions not previously visible (or perceivable with the multitude of sensors you folks use.)
Navigation is a weak term for this. I would call it observation and investigation. And OK exploration.
Did the Polynesian observations of the nighttime skies put them in the position--over the centuries--of having to keep track of significant amounts of new phenomenon?
Just did a tiny bit of astronomy 101. Primary moving objects visible to naked eye are planets, moons, comets. Stars stay in place but "the stars do move slowly over the course of the night. The entire sky rotates about the point in the sky where you can find the North Star. " Happy to be corrected if I am wrong here.
Upshot: the bulk of what the wayfinders observed over the centuries in the sky remained largely the same. Hence their endeavors were not investigative and explorative but memorization and using that memory map in direction finding (navigation), IMO. Am I still wrong?