{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1450",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1450,
    "subject": "Of Urth's Stars, and the use of Magnetic Compasses",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-03-25T14:26:29+00:00",
    "last": "1999-03-25T14:26:29+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0024-0091@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mitchell A. Bailey",
        "address": "mab at lindau.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-03-25T14:26:29+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Of Urth's Stars, and the use of Magnetic Compasses",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "\"...the constellation called The Eight, which curiously has only three\nstars. The constellation he's talking about is our Octans, meaning\noctant--an eighth of a circle--which is triangular-shaped. Hence someone\nin the future, in compiling his or her atlas of the sky, has\nmistranslated Octans as The Eight.\"\n\nThanks, Robert, I had wondered about that, but, Octans being a minor\nconstellation, I missed it in a casual search. I once speculated that\nsome missing components of \"the eight\" might have burnt out, implying a\ntime frame of hundreds of millions of years, or moved drastically out of\nplace, over a time frame of millions of years.\nSince stars within the galaxy orbit the galaxy or otherwise are in\nmotion, constellations change over the course of tens or hundreds of\nthousands of millenia. That a constellation of our time is recognizable\nto Severian would be an indication that either BNS is not set millions\nof years in the future, but a few tens of millenia at most, or (shudder)\nWolfe goofed his astronomy by neglecting the time dimension.\n\nAre there any more mentions of constellations known to us, other than\nthat controversial reference to \"The Swan\" among Thecla's memories\ndiscussed before? Taurus is implied in that same passage, but the\ncreature described resembles the Minotaur more so than a bull, in my\nopinion.\n\nHere's a homework question for fellow Urthlings: does anyone recall any\nmentions or references being made anywhere in B/UNS to the use of\nmagnetic compasses on Urth? It could be as simple as one of Sev's\ntypical throwaway simile lines e.g. \"- as a mariner uses a lodestone to\nsteer his pelagic argosy-\" or some such. Alternatively, any references\nto what substitutes navigators might use would be a clue. \n\nAny geologists out there may have figured out what I'm driving at, but\notherwise if and when some passage of that kind is found, I'll explain."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}