Want to know more? To read BobвЂ™s previous columns, click here. For, in every sense, вЂњconstant as the northern starвЂќ is becoming truer than ever. The Landmark Julius Caesar, the fifth volume in the series, collects Julius Caesars Commentaries on his Gallic campaigns and the civil war with Pompey the. Or put it off until whenever Polaris is going nowhere. It comes from Act III, Scene I, and is spoken by Caesar to his conspirators right before they. his reason and who is, as Caesar As constant as the northern star. I am as constant as the northern star is a quote from William Shakespeares play, Julius Caesar. One Canadian researcher has predicted that the North StarвЂ™s variations will soon come to a complete and permanent standstill, granting it yet another curious distinction: as the first Cepheid variable to give up its unsteady habits.Д¬heck it out during this month, when itвЂ™s simplest to find. again the cyclorama was lit with stars twinkling down from a night sky. 1 magnitude when the 20 th century began, in our new century the flickerings are less than. But you canвЂ™t have an unreliable standard star, and the system moved on.ДЄs if petitioning for another chance, its fluctuations have been strangely diminishing. The tiny flickering was unfortunate at first, since the entire system of measuring the brightness of stars originally used Polaris as its standard. This brightness varies over a four-day period by an amount too small for the eye to notice. Cause you believed in me, Thru my darkest night. Yeah, this is my way Of telling you that everyday Im loving you, so much more. I just want to say, this is my way Of telling you everything, I could never say before.

Its been you, woman, Right down the line. For starters, itвЂ™s not an ordinary sun but a вЂњCepheid variableвЂќ: a giant pulsating star shining with the light of at least 1,000 suns. Youve been as constant as the Northern star, The brightest light that shines. Turns out, that distant celebrity to which EarthвЂ™s axis happens to point is remarkable in its own right. From the mid-Hudson Valley, compasses point a whopping 14 degrees to the left of north. A compass, by contrast, follows magnetic lines of force and is badly in error from most locations. In oneвЂ™s imagination, itвЂ™s fun to drop a stone straight down from Polaris, because it then touches true north to an accuracy of better than a degree. This implausible situation continues to improve as Polaris slowly creeps toward its half-degree flyby of the celestial pole 87 years from now. We live in the unlikely era of the best possible North Star. But never in those 26 millennia is there a star as bright and as close to true north as Polaris.

Over the centuries, the slow 25,780-year wobble of EarthвЂ™s axis allows a procession of stars to take turns being closest to the site around which the sky performs its counterclockwise spin.