Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Clocks: In a world of booked calendars and packed schedules, it’s hard to imagine life without them. But as it turns out, we’ve been telling time long before their invention. For millennia, people have used the stars to understand and organize the movement of time.
» Subscribe to Seeker! bit.ly/subscribeseeker
» Visit our shop at shop.seeker.com
» Catch up on Constellations! bit.ly/3uKysSS
As early as 3500 BCE, the Egyptians began building obelisks to divide their days into parts resembling the hours we know today. The moving shadows created by the Sun hitting the obelisk helped to divide morning from afternoon, while the length of the noontime shadow showed the year's longest and shortest days. This is the same principle behind sundials, which you may be more familiar with. But watching shadows move across the Earth isn’t the only way the sky can help us keep time.
Around the same time the Egyptians were building obelisks, a 366-day calendar structured on the movements of the Sun and the moon was being developed in China. But after a few centuries of use, astronomers began noticing that the calendar became inaccurate every 300 years or so. The reason? Well, the stars, including the Sun, aren’t as “fixed” in the night sky as they appear to be.
There’s movement happening; something that we call precession. As the Earth’s rotational axis slowly moves,
the stars shift in our night sky. About every 26,000 years or so, we get a new view of the stars. Today, most of us know that Polaris is the North Star. But 26,000 years ago, Thuban— a star in the 'tail' of the constellation Draco—was the marker of the poles! By the 5th century CE, Chinese scholars had figured out the whole precession problem and factored it into their calendar. And roughly 500 years later, one of the greatest time-keeping achievements of ancient China was unveiled: a five-story astronomical clock tower. This mechanical structure ran on a day and night time-keeping wheel that was powered by water!
#stars #clocks #time #sundials #obelisks #space #NASA #constellations #astronomy #astrology #science #seeker
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Read more:
Telling Time by the Big Dipper
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~huffman/dtime.html
"Everyone knows that experienced woodsmen and woodswomen can tell time by the stars, but have you ever met anybody that could!? Here's how."
Sundials: Where Time Began
farmersalmanac.com/sundials-time-began-18870
"If you go to the beach with the family and pitch your umbrella in the sand, you can get a basic understanding of how sundials work. As you enjoy the afternoon by the ocean, you may notice how the shadow your umbrella casts on the sand changes throughout the day. Without even looking at your watch, you probably know when it’s time to head home by where the Sun is in the sky and the position of your umbrella’s shadow."
What Is an Atomic Clock? And the Deep Space Atomic Clock?
scitechdaily.com/what-is-an-atomic-clock-and-the-deep-space-atomic-clock
"To determine a spacecraft’s distance from Earth, navigators send a signal to the spacecraft, which then returns it to Earth. The time the signal requires to make that two-way journey reveals the spacecraft’s distance from Earth because the signal travels at a known speed (the speed of light)."
--
You can probably point to the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt, and your astrological sign in the sky. But what would the constellations look like from another solar system? And will any of Orion’s stars ever become black holes? In Seeker Constellations, we'll explain the science of the universe’s most famous stars and dive into the culturally significant stories behind them. Most importantly, we’ll provide a guide to where you can see these incredible constellations for yourself!
--
Seeker empowers the curious to understand the science shaping our world. We tell award-winning stories about the natural forces and groundbreaking innovations that impact our lives, our planet, and our universe.
Visit the Seeker website seeker.com
Seeker on Facebook facebook.com/SeekerMedia
Seeker on Twitter twitter.com/seeker
Clocks: In a world of booked calendars and packed schedules, it’s hard to imagine life without them. But as it turns out, we’ve been telling time long before their invention. For millennia, people have used the stars to understand and organize the movement of time.
» Subscribe to Seeker! bit.ly/subscribeseeker
» Visit our shop at shop.seeker.com
» Catch up on Constellations! bit.ly/3uKysSS
As early as 3500 BCE, the Egyptians began building obelisks to divide their days into parts resembling the hours we know today. The moving shadows created by the Sun hitting the obelisk helped to divide morning from afternoon, while the length of the noontime shadow showed the year's longest and shortest days. This is the same principle behind sundials, which you may be more familiar with. But watching shadows move across the Earth isn’t the only way the sky can help us keep time.
Around the same time the Egyptians were building obelisks, a 366-day calendar structured on the movements of the Sun and the moon was being developed in China. But after a few centuries of use, astronomers began noticing that the calendar became inaccurate every 300 years or so. The reason? Well, the stars, including the Sun, aren’t as “fixed” in the night sky as they appear to be.
There’s movement happening; something that we call precession. As the Earth’s rotational axis slowly moves,
the stars shift in our night sky. About every 26,000 years or so, we get a new view of the stars. Today, most of us know that Polaris is the North Star. But 26,000 years ago, Thuban— a star in the 'tail' of the constellation Draco—was the marker of the poles! By the 5th century CE, Chinese scholars had figured out the whole precession problem and factored it into their calendar. And roughly 500 years later, one of the greatest time-keeping achievements of ancient China was unveiled: a five-story astronomical clock tower. This mechanical structure ran on a day and night time-keeping wheel that was powered by water!
#stars #clocks #time #sundials #obelisks #space #NASA #constellations #astronomy #astrology #science #seeker
--
Read more:
Telling Time by the Big Dipper
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~huffman/dtime.html
"Everyone knows that experienced woodsmen and woodswomen can tell time by the stars, but have you ever met anybody that could!? Here's how."
Sundials: Where Time Began
farmersalmanac.com/sundials-time-began-18870
"If you go to the beach with the family and pitch your umbrella in the sand, you can get a basic understanding of how sundials work. As you enjoy the afternoon by the ocean, you may notice how the shadow your umbrella casts on the sand changes throughout the day. Without even looking at your watch, you probably know when it’s time to head home by where the Sun is in the sky and the position of your umbrella’s shadow."
What Is an Atomic Clock? And the Deep Space Atomic Clock?
scitechdaily.com/what-is-an-atomic-clock-and-the-deep-space-atomic-clock
"To determine a spacecraft’s distance from Earth, navigators send a signal to the spacecraft, which then returns it to Earth. The time the signal requires to make that two-way journey reveals the spacecraft’s distance from Earth because the signal travels at a known speed (the speed of light)."
--
You can probably point to the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt, and your astrological sign in the sky. But what would the constellations look like from another solar system? And will any of Orion’s stars ever become black holes? In Seeker Constellations, we'll explain the science of the universe’s most famous stars and dive into the culturally significant stories behind them. Most importantly, we’ll provide a guide to where you can see these incredible constellations for yourself!
--
Seeker empowers the curious to understand the science shaping our world. We tell award-winning stories about the natural forces and groundbreaking innovations that impact our lives, our planet, and our universe.
Visit the Seeker website seeker.com
Seeker on Facebook facebook.com/SeekerMedia
Seeker on Twitter twitter.com/seeker
