Modern astronomers do and ancient Egyptian astronomers did, but in Western European astronomy this wasn't discovered until a few years before the dawn of the 18th century CE, and many ordinary people today don't know this fact. But, Australian aborigines were well aware of it and embedded it in their mythology.
[N]ew research, recently published in The Australian Journal of Anthropology, reveals that Aboriginal oral traditions describe the variable nature of three red-giant stars: Betelgeuse, Aldebaran and Antares.From here.
The myths not only embed the variable stars in the myths about the constellations that are home to them, but also recount the relative frequency with which their magnitude varies.
2 comments:
Clocks. Don’t forget that they are clocks, for navigation. The Polynesians had the tides on the shore to mark accurate times at a coastal location, but in the desert you need as much information from the night sky as possible.
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