On Dec 26, 9:15*pm, Dr J R Stockton
wrote:

As the midnight starting a date moves around the world, from east of NZ
to west of HI, the Earth will move in its orbit by about a degree and
the meridian will shift accordingly by about a degree across the
Heavenly Sphere. *The selected star therefore depends on one's current
longitude.

The "night" part of the meridian is 180 degrees long on the ground, and
the portion of the "Heavenly Meridian" that one can see depends on one's
latitude. *The selected star therefore depends on one's current
latitude.

The year is not a multiple of a day long; it is nearly a quarter of a
day longer. *The meridian will move correspondingly along the heavens,
in sawtooth fashion. The selected star therefore depends on the current
year.

ISTM better to choose the brightest star nearest overhead at the
location and time of one's birth. *To get a clear decision, it will be
necessary to weight the brightness (either minus the magnitude or the
flux density) by a suitable function (the inverse square, ISTM) of the
angular distance of the star from the zenith or nadir at the location
and time of delivery.

For your list of bright stars : remember that many are never visible
from all inhabited latitudes.


Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

With slightly more than 365 days in the year, the Sun moves almost 1°
eastwards along the ecliptic each day.
This translates to an almost one-degree advance in Right Ascension of
the line of sky that successively transits the meridian from one
midnight to the next. This in turn means that there will be a fraction-
of-a-degree difference in transit times of any particular star across
the various international time zones of the globe.

Since the Greenwich meridian is internationally accepted as the
standard "Prime Meridian" of the world, so my list is to be based on
*that* meridian for an observer located along that line of meridian
running through Greenwich, England.

I am further extending my list so that there will be at least one
prominent celestial object crossing the meridian at each and every
single midnight of the year. Furthermore, I am proposing to identify
*two* prominent objects along that narrow one-degree strip of Right
Ascension of the sky, so that they are suitably spaced apart in
northerly and southerly Declinations, making them accessible for
viewing from all inhabited regions of the globe.