Talk:Thuban
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[edit] Date
Anyone have a date for when Thuban became the Pole Star? I found its closes approach, and the time when it lost the title to Kochab, but not when it got it first. I seem to recall a table of pole stars in S&T or Astronomy lo! these many years ago, buy my memory is not that good. Rummaging around on the web produces nothing much.... -- Paul Drye
It started being useful for that purpose around 3300 BC, and was better than Kochab all the way up to about 1900 BC, as mentioned before. In fact, during its entire career as pole star, it was better than Kochab ever was. At about 2750, it was almost dead-on with the pole, and even better than Polaris is today. This chart: http://www.recoveredscience.com/Fig1-8%20zoom%20to%20sky%20pole.gif will give you an idea.
I ran star charts during the times in question, using SkyChart III, and came up with the new values entered in the article. Thuban was closest to the pole for even longer than I thought it was. user:Jsc1973
[edit] The Alpha designation is apparently due to its history as the ancient pole star.
Is there a source for this? Since Bayer was judging magnitude by eye - photometric devices not being invented until long after his time - simple error presents itself as another explanation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Orcoteuthis (talk • contribs) 16:48, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Previous Pole Star
Logic would say that the pole stars lie in a circle, so.... follow up from present til we get to thuban again and therfor, we have thubans forrunner as pole star.--Jakezing (talk) 15:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Th'uban is not mean Dragon in arabic
Th'uban in Arabic means Snake (ar) ثعبان
see List_of_the_star_names_in_Draco Salem F (talk) 17:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
[edit] References in Sumer / Akkadian empire
Is there any references to this star as the Pole Star in Sumerian or Akkadian sources? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.11.220.249 (talk) 20:59, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
- I'm not sure, but there is a tentative identification with the Babylonian MU-BU-KESH-DA on Table 3a of Rogers (1998). However, R.H. Allen associated this star with theta ophiuchi, so who knows?—RJH (talk) 19:54, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
