Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
Accurate observations of stellar positions are essential to many problems of astronomy. Positions of the brighter stars can be measured very accurately in the equatorial system (the coordinates of which are called right ascension [α, or RA] and declination [δ, or DEC] and are given for some epoch—for example, 1950.0 or, currently, 2000.0). Fainter stars are measured by using...
...(London), Paris, Cape Town, and Washington, D.C. By timing the passage of stars as the local meridian was swept past them by the Earth’s rotation, astronomers were able to improve the accuracy of position measurements of celestial objects from a few minutes of arc (before the advent of the telescope) to less than a tenth of a second of arc.
For many centuries practical navigators oriented themselves by relying just as strongly on meteorological clues (the directions from which steady winds blew) as on astronomical ones (the positions and apparent motions of the Sun and stars). The Mediterranean sailor could confidently distinguish the cold north wind from the warm south wind. Names were assigned to eight principal winds, and the...
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