• 1 Post
  • 1 Comment
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: November 15th, 2023

help-circle

  • I’m not sure what you mean by “star maps change”, star maps are quite constant. You might be just referring to astrology maps (not astronomy), where they changed the astrological signs by one, as the Earth has precessed about 1/12th of the way through our 26,000 year wobble, so the signs are slowly in the wrong place regarding people’s birthdays, which is yet another reason why astrology is bogus.

    Having said that, stars do move over time, but it’s a very slow movement. Much too slow for a human to notice any major differences in their lifetime. But it’s quite easy to measure with equipment. Barnard’s Star has the highest movement from our perspective, it moves about 10 arcseconds per year, very easy to measure. Since stars don’t move much even over centuries, star maps are accurate for a very long time, since the changes are very slow and minor. A star map from 100 years ago (assuming it’s accurate) would be just fine for almost all purposes today outside of precise astronomy.