On 03/10/2025 10.10, Cryptoengineer wrote:
On 10/3/2025 10:21 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
Here Is Your Periodic Reminder that Stars Move
STARS MOVE! STARS MOVE! STARS MOVE!
https://reactormag.com/here-is-your-periodic-reminder-that-stars-move/
With respect to footnote 5, I need to be pedantic and point out that "light year" is not a metric unit. And, of course, astronomers don't use it, outside of popularizations. They use parsecs, which aren't metric either. The closest astronomers get to metric (or at least, to SI) is their use of "cgs" units.
My favorite 'stars move' anecdote relates to the Pleiades.
They're known in the West as 'the seven sisters', daughters of Pleione, though that is quite likely a retcon of an older meaning.
They're mentioned in mythologies all over the world, nearly always as
seven connected people.
This is despite the fact that, to nearly all watchers, there are only
six stars visible. Many of the legends have some way of accounting for
this, giving a reason why one person is gone.
Note that the Subaru logo has only six starts - 'Subaru' is the
Japanese name for the formation.
Something very similar to the changing number of visible stars in a
cluster (including the name not matching) is a vital clue in _Foundation
and Earth_ (or maybe it was _Foundation's Edge_?)
--
Michael F. Stemper
Always use apostrophe's and "quotation marks" properly.
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