Are the stars always in the same position relative to earth?

[king of games]

when u look up at the sky at night are the stars always in the same position? did the early sea faring navigators use the position of stars to navigate? e.g. north star.... how come if the earth is rotating on is own axis can u navigate with stars which are surely changing position as the earth rotates?

[Maahi]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...=1&theater

hope it could help you out......

[Acetek]

For all intent and purposes the stars are always in the same place. Yes the stars are moving and changing there position but because of the vast distance to the stars the motion is very very very slow and the change in position very very very small relative to us.

The north star has been in its current position for thousands of years. Because of the procession of the Earths axis eventually (some 20,000+ years) the star Vega will be our new north star.

Because we know that at certain times the stars will be in a specific position in the sky navigation is possible

[jehen]

To one another yes. But snce our vantage point changes as the earth rotates and changes throughout the course of a year as the earth orbits the sun. We see a different collection of stars at different times of year. If you are at mid-latitudes at midnight on July 1 you are looking into the opposite direction of the night sky as you did at midnight on Jan 1, so you see different stars. But on any given day and time of the year, those are the same stars in the same place in the sky as they were on the same date and time last year and will be next year.

[Morningfox]

The stars are always in the same position relative to the CENTER of the Earth. At least, you aren't going to notice the very small movement that they have - - it takes 1300 years for a star like Sirius to move 0.5 degrees.

But .. the stars do appear to move relative to your HORIZON. They circle around a point in the sky called the North Celestial Pole, taking close to full day to make one circle. So by noticing where the center of the star circle is, you can figure out which direction is north.

When you look at this video, the center of the circle is not in the picture, but you could still figure out where it is.

[obelix]

depends on the time-scale you are talking about ... stars are pretty much in fixed position w.r.t. both rotation and revolution of the earth (they do move, but being far far away, their movement makes hardly any change in the arc-length with respect to our coordinate system), but if you are think of visible sky, then it changes with months ... simply because during the earth's revolution around the sun different parts of the sky are visible to us.