Talk:Thuban
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[edit] Date
Anyone have a date for when Thuban became the Pole Star? I found its closes approach, and the time when it lost the title to Kochab, but not when it got it first. I seem to recall a table of pole stars in S&T or Astronomy lo! these many years ago, buy my memory is not that good. Rummaging around on the web produces nothing much.... -- Paul Drye
It started being useful for that purpose around 3300 BC, and was better than Kochab all the way up to about 1900 BC, as mentioned before. In fact, during its entire career as pole star, it was better than Kochab ever was. At about 2750, it was almost dead-on with the pole, and even better than Polaris is today. This chart: http://www.recoveredscience.com/Fig1-8%20zoom%20to%20sky%20pole.gif will give you an idea.
I ran star charts during the times in question, using SkyChart III, and came up with the new values entered in the article. Thuban was closest to the pole for even longer than I thought it was. user:Jsc1973
[edit] The Alpha designation is apparently due to its history as the ancient pole star.
Is there a source for this? Since Bayer was judging magnitude by eye - photometric devices not being invented until long after his time - simple error presents itself as another explanation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Orcoteuthis (talk • contribs) 16:48, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
