The 2012–2013 voyage of the Waka Tapu closed the Polynesian triangle. This confirmed that it is possible to successfully and deliberately travel great distances by canoe while navigating without ...
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 around the Pacific Ocean – once ...
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 and the Pointers – to identify the cardinal ...
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 observing, for example ...
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. One of the easiest ways to predict weather is to ...
Elements are formed deep within the cores of certain types of star. Find out more in this interactive.
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 hourua. In the 1970s, the Polynesians ...
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 rise and set can use the horizon as a compass ...
The Science Learning Hub has lots of resources for primary teachers related to the night sky in the Planet Earth and Beyond strand of the New Zealand Curriculum. The night sky is fascinating to ...
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 and ...
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 used ...
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 Ngahiraka Mai Tawhiti, known ...
Since the global positioning system (GPS) became fully operational in the mid-1990s, it’s widely used to navigate, map and survey land as well as study the small changes in movement of objects on ...
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 Te ...
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 the Polynesian migration ...
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 into Oceania (Micronesia ...
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. In reality, this does not happen. The stars appear to rise ...
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 how and why wayfinders use the ...
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 hunt. By the end of this activity ...
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 ...
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 look at what sound is, how it travels, what changes under ...
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 the stars (more on the star ...
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 to gain insight ...
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. There are also sections on the risks when ...
