We’ll have a new “North Star” in just 1000 years | Precession of the equinoxes

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The Earth's axis is wobbling like a top, and in just 1000 years the north pole of the Earth will no longer point in the direction of Polaris, our current "North Star". It also means the equinoxes are shifting where they occur in Earth's orbit, changing our night skies. This is known as the "precession of the equinoxes". Thankfully though our calendar already cleverly takes care of this...

Campbell et al. (1988 - candidate planet around Ɣ Cephei) - https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/p...
Hatzes et al. (2003 - Tadmoor confirmed with radial velocity measurements) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/030511...

Check out the past and future dates of the solstices and equinoxes here: https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/...

00:00 - Introduction
01:00 - Earth's axis wobble & precession
02:26 - How long will Polaris be the "north star" for?
03:02 - Gamma Cephei - the new "north star" with an exoplanet
04:46 - The "north stars" of the next 13,000 years
05:31 - Does this affect our seasons?
06:52 - The Gregorian calendar (sidereal vs tropical year)
08:56 - Orion as a SUMMER constellation?!
09:39 - The ancient Greeks and the precession of the equinoxes
10:10 - The Calendar riots and Polaris riots?!
11:15- Brilliant
12:24 - Bloopers


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👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

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