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Star · evidence and sources

Polaris

The North Star, lying close to the north celestial pole and used for navigation.

HYG 4.2 Position basis, the same label the app shows on the selection card.

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Every aspect, with its origin

One record per aspect. The origin says what kind of thing each value is; the source says where it came from; the limit says what it cannot tell you.

ObservedCatalogComputedReconstructedIllustrativeUndocumented
Position Catalog

Sky position and distance

Polaris is placed at J2000 RA 2.5 h, Dec 89.3° (visual magnitude 2.02, spectral type F7).

EpochJ2000
MethodThe live star field draws the same star from the HYG v4.2 catalog (Hipparcos, Yale BSC, Gliese) with proper motion applied to the simulation date.
LimitThe bundled coordinates carry no recorded retrieval; the HYG catalog behind the star field is the documented source for the same star.
Description Undocumented

Description and facts

The short description and the fact list are written by the Space Time authors for orientation. They are not quoted from a catalog field and carry no citation of their own.

SourceSpace Time editorial text
LimitBackground reading is linked under Further reading; it is not the source of the displayed numbers.

What is not measured

Nothing on this page is a reconstruction or a schematic; every record above is observed, catalogued or computed.

Not yet documented

  • Physical data: no record. Space Time does not claim a source for this aspect.
  • Appearance: no record. Space Time does not claim a source for this aspect.
  • Description: Background reading is linked under Further reading; it is not the source of the displayed numbers.

Dataset freshness

Snapshots this page depends on, read from the generated manifests at request time.
DatasetLast refreshedHorizonAutomated
Nearest Gaia DR3 sources no snapshot date Epoch 2016.0 astrometry with proper motion and covariance for parallax > 40 mas No, refreshed by hand
scripts/build-gaia-nearby

Sources cited

Further reading

Wikipedia: Polaris (background only; not the source of the displayed numbers)

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