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32-536: The zenith is the point in the sky that appears directly above the observer. Zenith or Zénith may also refer to: Zenith The word zenith derives from an inaccurate reading of the Arabic expression سمت الرأس ( samt al-raʾs ), meaning "direction of the head" or "path above the head", by Medieval Latin scribes in the Middle Ages (during the 14th century), possibly through Old Spanish . It

64-410: A sidereal compass rose of a sidereal compass. [REDACTED] Media related to Zenith (topography) at Wikimedia Commons Compass rose#Sidereal A compass rose or compass star , sometimes called a wind rose or rose of the winds , is a polar diagram displaying the orientation of the cardinal directions ( north , east , south , and west ) and their intermediate points . It

96-494: A compass rose were frequently labeled by the initial letters of the mariner's principal winds (T, G, L, S, O, L, P, M). From the outset, the custom also began to distinguish the north from the other points by a specific visual marker. Medieval Italian cartographers typically used a simple arrowhead or circumflex-hatted T (an allusion to the compass needle) to designate the north, while the Majorcan cartographic school typically used

128-454: A compass rose, but rather separately on small disks or coins on the edges of the map. The compass rose was also depicted on traverse boards used on board ships to record headings sailed at set time intervals. The contemporary compass rose appears as two rings, one smaller and set inside the other. The outside ring denotes true cardinal directions while the smaller inside ring denotes magnetic cardinal directions. True north refers to

160-537: A stylized Pole Star for its north mark. The use of the fleur-de-lis as north mark was introduced by Pedro Reinel , and quickly became customary in compass roses (and is still often used today). Old compass roses also often used a Christian cross at Levante (E), indicating the direction of Jerusalem from the point of view of the Mediterranean sea. The twelve Classical winds (or a subset of them) were also sometimes depicted on portolan charts, albeit not on

192-654: Is a type of telescope designed to point straight up at or near the zenith, and used for precision measurement of star positions, to simplify telescope construction, or both. The NASA Orbital Debris Observatory and the Large Zenith Telescope are both zenith telescopes, since the use of liquid mirrors meant these telescopes could only point straight up. On the International Space Station , zenith and nadir are used instead of up and down , referring to directions within and around

224-424: Is not clear at what angles the classical winds are supposed to be with each other; some have argued that they should be equally spaced at 30 degrees each; for more details, see the article on Classical compass winds ). The sidereal compass rose demarcates the compass points by the position of stars ("steering stars"; not to be confused with zenith stars ) in the night sky, rather than winds. Arab navigators in

256-543: Is used on compasses (including magnetic ones), maps (such as compass rose networks ), or monuments. It is particularly common in navigation systems , including nautical charts , non-directional beacons (NDB), VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) systems, satellite navigation devices (" GPS "). Linguistic anthropological studies have shown that most human communities have four points of cardinal direction . The names given to these directions are usually derived from either locally-specific geographic features (e.g. "towards

288-673: The Maghreb and Mashriq are SW and SE of Sicily respectively; the Greco (a NE wind), reflects the position of Byzantine-held Calabria-Apulia to the northeast of Arab Sicily, while the Maestro (a NW wind) is a reference to the Mistral wind that blows from the southern French coast towards northwest Sicily. The 32-point compass used for navigation in the Mediterranean by the 14th century, had increments of 11 1 ⁄ 4 ° between points. Only

320-570: The Red Sea and the Indian Ocean , who depended on celestial navigation , were using a 32-point sidereal compass rose before the end of the 10th century. In the northern hemisphere, the steady Pole Star ( Polaris ) was used for the N–S axis; the less-steady Southern Cross had to do for the southern hemisphere, as the southern pole star, Sigma Octantis , is too dim to be easily seen from Earth with

352-424: The antipode of that location 12 hours from solar noon . In astronomy , the altitude in the horizontal coordinate system and the zenith angle are complementary angles , with the horizon perpendicular to the zenith. The astronomical meridian is also determined by the zenith, and is defined as a circle on the celestial sphere that passes through the zenith, nadir, and the celestial poles . A zenith telescope

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384-490: The map layout . The modern compass rose has eight principal winds . Listed clockwise, these are: Although modern compasses use the names of the eight principal directions (N, NE, E, SE, etc.), older compasses use the traditional Italianate wind names of Medieval origin (Tramontana, Greco, Levante, etc.). Four-point compass roses use only the four "basic winds" or " cardinal directions " (North, East, South, West), with angles of difference at 90°. Eight-point compass roses use

416-440: The summer solstice horizon ( Caecias , Argestes ), the equinox ( Apeliotes , Zephyrus ) and the winter solstice ( Eurus , Lips ). Aristotle's system was asymmetric. To restore balance, Timosthenes of Rhodes added two more winds to produce the classical 12-wind rose, and began using the winds to denote geographical direction in navigation. Eratosthenes deducted two winds from Aristotle's system, to produce

448-590: The Medieval era, but seafarers in the Mediterranean came up with their own distinct 8-wind system. The mariners used names derived from the Mediterranean lingua franca , composed principally of Ligurian , mixed with Venetian , Sicilian , Provençal , Catalan , Greek and Arabic terms from around the Mediterranean basin. The exact origin of the mariner's eight-wind rose is obscure. Only two of its point names ( Ostro , Libeccio ) have Classical etymologies,

480-558: The Sun ("The sun reached its zenith..."), but to an astronomer, the Sun does not have its own zenith and is at the zenith only if it is directly overhead. In a scientific context, the zenith is the direction of reference for measuring the zenith angle (or zenith angular distance ), the angle between a direction of interest (e.g. a star) and the local zenith - that is, the complement of the altitude angle (or elevation angle ). The Sun reaches

512-630: The angles of the principal winds to come up with intermediate compass points, known as half-winds , at angles of difference of 22 1 ⁄ 2 °. The names of the half-winds are simply combinations of the principal winds to either side, principal then ordinal. E.g. North-northeast (NNE), East-northeast (ENE), etc. Using gradians , of which there are 400 in a circle, the sixteen-point rose has twenty-five gradians per point. Thirty-two-point compass roses are constructed by bisecting these angles, and coming up with quarter-winds at 11 1 ⁄ 4 ° angles of difference. Quarter-wind names are constructed with

544-432: The circumference of a large implicit circle. The cartographer Cresques Abraham of Majorca , in his Catalan Atlas of 1375, was the first to draw an ornate compass rose on a map. By the end of the 15th century, Portuguese cartographers began drawing multiple ornate compass roses throughout the chart, one upon each of the sixteen circumference roses (unless the illustration conflicted with coastal details). The points on

576-661: The classical 12 winds. During the Migration Period , the Germanic names for the cardinal directions entered the Romance languages , where they replaced the Latin names borealis with north, australis with south, occidentalis with west and orientalis with east. The following table gives a rough equivalence of the classical 12-wind rose with the modern compass directions (Note: the directions are imprecise since it

608-599: The classical eight-wind rose. The Romans (e.g. Seneca , Pliny ) adopted the Greek 12-wind system, and replaced its names with Latin equivalents, e.g. Septentrio , Subsolanus , Auster , Favonius , etc. The De architectura of the Roman architect Vitruvius describes 24 winds. According to the chronicler Einhard ( c.  830 ), the Frankish king Charlemagne himself came up with his own names for

640-431: The compass (naming all 32 winds) was expected of all Medieval mariners. In the earliest medieval portolan charts of the 14th century, compass roses were depicted as mere collections of color-coded compass rhumb lines : black for the eight main winds, green for the eight half-winds and red for the sixteen quarter-winds. The average portolan chart had sixteen such roses (or confluence of lines), spaced out equally around

672-409: The declination of the star equals the latitude of the observer. If the current time at Greenwich is known at the time of the observation, the observers longitude can also be determined from the right ascension of the star. Hence "Zenith stars" lie on or near the circle of declination equal to the latitude of the observer ("zenith circle"). Zenith stars are not to be confused with "steering stars" of

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704-409: The eight principal winds —that is, the four cardinal directions (N, E, S, W) plus the four "intercardinal" or " ordinal directions " (NE, SE, SW, NW), at angles of difference of 45°. Twelve-point compass roses, with markings 30° apart, are often painted on airport ramps to assist with the adjustment of aircraft magnetic compass compensators. Sixteen-point compass roses are constructed by bisecting

736-590: The eight principal winds (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) were given special names. The eight half-winds just combined the names of the two principal winds, e.g. Greco-Tramontana for NNE, Greco-Levante for ENE, and so on. Quarter-winds were more cumbersomely phrased, with the closest principal wind named first and the next-closest principal wind second, e.g. "Quarto di Tramontana verso Greco" (literally, "one quarter wind from North towards Northeast", i.e. North by East), and "Quarto di Greco verso Tramontana" ("one quarter wind from NE towards N", i.e. Northeast by North). Boxing

768-495: The geographical location of the north pole while magnetic north refers to the direction towards which the north pole of a magnetic object (as found in a compass ) will point. The angular difference between true and magnetic north is called variation , which varies depending on location. The angular difference between magnetic heading and compass heading is called deviation which varies by vessel and its heading. North arrows are often included in contemporary maps as part of

800-1069: The hills", "towards the sea") or from celestial bodies (especially the sun) or from atmospheric features (winds, temperature). Most mobile populations tend to adopt sunrise and sunset for East and West and the direction from where different winds blow to denote North and South. The ancient Greeks originally maintained distinct and separate systems of points and winds. The four Greek cardinal points ( arctos , anatole , mesembria and dusis ) were based on celestial bodies and used for orientation. The four Greek winds ( Boreas , Notos , Eurus , Zephyrus ) were confined to meteorology . Nonetheless, both systems were gradually conflated, and wind names came eventually to denote cardinal directions as well. In his meteorological studies, Aristotle identified ten distinct winds: two north–south winds ( Aparctias , Notos ) and four sets of east–west winds blowing from different latitudes—the Arctic Circle ( Meses , Thrascias ),

832-429: The naked eye. The other thirty points on the sidereal rose were determined by the rising and setting positions of fifteen bright stars. Reading from North to South, in their rising and setting positions, these are: The western half of the rose would be the same stars in their setting position. The true position of these stars is only approximate to their theoretical equidistant rhumbs on the sidereal compass. Stars with

864-458: The names "X by Y", which can be read as "one quarter wind from X toward Y", where X is one of the eight principal winds and Y is one of the two adjacent cardinal directions. For example, North-by-east (NbE) is one quarter wind from North towards East, Northeast-by-north (NEbN) is one quarter wind from Northeast toward North. Naming all 32 points on the rose is called " boxing the compass ". The 32-point rose has 11 1 ⁄ 4 ° between points, but

896-476: The observer's zenith when it is 90° above the horizon, and this only happens between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn . In Islamic astronomy , the passing of the Sun over the zenith of Mecca becomes the basis of the qibla observation by shadows twice a year on 27/28 May and 15/16 July. At a given location during the course of a day, the Sun reaches not only its zenith but also its nadir , at

928-474: The rest of the names seem to be autonomously derived. Two Arabic words stand out: Scirocco (SE) from al-Sharq (الشرق – east in Arabic) and the variant Garbino (SW), from al-Gharb (الغرب – west in Arabic). This suggests the mariner's rose was probably acquired by southern Italian seafarers; not from their classical Roman ancestors, but rather from Norman Sicily in the 11th to 12th centuries. The coasts of

960-533: The same declination formed a "linear constellation" or kavenga to provide direction as the night progressed. A similar sidereal compass was used by Polynesian and Micronesian navigators in the Pacific Ocean, although different stars were used in a number of cases, clustering around the east–west axis. In Europe, the Classical 12-wind system continued to be taught in academic settings during

992-442: The station, relative to the earth. Zenith stars (also "star on top", "overhead star", "latitude star") are stars whose declination equals the latitude of the observers location, and hence at some time in the day or night pass culminate (pass) through the zenith. When at the zenith the right ascension of the star equals the local sidereal time at your location. In celestial navigation this allows latitude to be determined, since

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1024-472: Was reduced to samt ("direction") and miswritten as senit / cenit , the m being misread as ni . Through the Old French cenith , zenith first appeared in the 17th century. The term zenith sometimes means the highest point , way, or level reached by a celestial body on its daily apparent path around a given point of observation. This sense of the word is often used to describe the position of

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