Adventurous voyages and mysterious astronomy! Zheng He's seven voyages to the Western Oceans, Columbus' discovery of the New World, Vasco da Gama's eastward journey to India, and Magellan's tragic circumnavigation of the globe - how did they locate and navigate in the vast oceans? How do celestial bodies move regularly with the alternation of day and night and the changing of seasons? How long is a year or a day? How are constellations distributed with the brilliant stars shifting positions? Do you know the laws of the tides with their waxing and waning? This course starts with the exploration stories of ancient sailors and introduces the art of navigation by stars, the starry sky of different seasons, time, and tides in a casual and engaging manner, taking you on a mysterious journey into astronomy and navigation.
This course is divided into six chapters as follows:
Chapter 1: The Age of Great Voyages: Introduces the voyages of famous nautical historical figures such as Zheng He, Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Dias, and Magellan, the nautical problems they encountered, and their solutions.
Chapter 2: Navigation by the Stars: Explains how to locate and navigate in the vast oceans, learning the principles of astronomical positioning, ancient and modern methods of determining latitude by measuring the altitude of the North Star and the Sun's zenith height, as well as methods of observing the altitude of celestial bodies.
Chapter 3: Visual Motion of Celestial Bodies: Introduces the laws and phenomena of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, studying the relationship between sunrise, sunset, polar day, polar night, and the rotation and revolution of the Earth; understanding the relationship between the changing phases of the moon and its revolution around the Earth.
Chapter 4: Starry Skies of the Four Seasons: Learns the distribution and naming methods of the constellations in the whole sky, the relationship between the zodiac and the position of the sun, and the methods of identifying the seasonal changes of constellations at night.
Chapter 5: The Origin of Time: Studies the origin of the 24-hour day, the relationship between the revolution of the Earth and the solar calendar, the relationship between the revolution of the moon and the lunar calendar, and the relationship between leap months and solar terms in the agricultural calendar.
Chapter 6: Tides: Learns the mechanism of tide formation, the influence of the moon and sun on tides, the patterns of high and low tides, spring and neap tides; and methods of calculating tide times based on lunar dates.
