navigation

In this activity, students use their knowledge of the Sun and Moon to make compass directions and then use these directions to participate in a treasure...

In this activity, students read a legend of Kupe. They compare this with modern-day voyaging without navigational instruments to work out what might have happened during...

In this activity, students memorise a number of items from the star compass as wayfinding navigators would have to do. This experience may help students understand...

In this activity, students learn the cardinal points of the compass. They also learn how to use the Sun and star constellations – the Southern Cross...

In this activity, students learn about star constellations and that various cultures have their own names and legends about them. They will appreciate that identifying constellations...

Position: Master navigator, Field: Māori tradition/celestial navigation. Master navigator Jack Thatcher is based in Tauranga and is of Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Porou and...

The ancient craft that carried the first settlers to New Zealand were probably double-hulled – rather like two canoes side by side. They are called waka...

Waka is the Māori word for canoe. Māori ancestors were great canoe builders, navigators and sailors. Thousands of years ago, Māori ancestors left South-East Asia, moving...

There has been renewed interest in the ancient art of wayfinding over the last 30–40 years. Wayfinding or navigating without instruments is about ocean voyaging using...

Wayfinder navigators always look for signs of weather at sunrise and sunset. This is when they try to predict the weather for the next 12 hours....

When clouds hide the celestial signs, navigators use ocean swells, as well as the wind and waves, to determine their direction. Mau Piailug – grandmaster navigator...

Knowledge about the apparent movement of the Sun, Moon and planets across the celestial sphere is important for wayfinding. You can estimate position and direction by...

To an observer on Earth, the stars appear to move together across the sky during the night, rising in the east and setting in the west....

Like the Sun, stars rise in the eastern horizon and set in the western horizon. Navigators who know the direction and position in which the stars...

The Waka Tapu journey from Aotearoa to Rapanui (Easter Island) and back, which closed the Polynesian triangle, was navigated without instruments. The three main techniques that...

Navigator Jack Thatcher commanded the two waka hourua that sailed from Aotearoa (New Zealand) to Rapanui (Easter Island) and back. Te Aurere and its supporting vessel...

The noisy reef takes us under the waves to the reefs of New Zealand to explore sound and noise under water. Using this unique habitat, we...

Join Dr Haki Tuaupiki, senior lecturer at the University of Waikato’s Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao (Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies) as he shares...

In te ao Māori, space has a complex and extensive whakapapa. The narratives differ from iwi to iwi but follow similar themes. The cosmological origins of...

Puzzling out Pacific migrations explores possible reasons for the long pause between two phases of migration across the Pacific. It shows how scientists interpret data patterns...

This article is an introduction to GPS – how it works via satellite systems and trilateration, and how it is used in industry, transport and recreation....

This article explores Pacific migration and offers scientific and technological explanations for a thousand year gap between settlements in West Polynesia and East Polynesia. Scientists have...

For more than a decade, major earthquakes around the world have been interfering with our Earth-bound global positioning system (GPS) sites. A 2013 study by Australian,...

‘Interplanetary spacecraft navigation using pulsars’ might sound like the title of a Star Trek novel but is actually a 2013 scientific paper by a team of...