Polaris in Southern Hemisphere

Flerfs claim that Polaris has been seen from the Southern Hemisphere.

Eric Dubay has made the claim, and explicitly cited William Carpenter as his source. (See § William Carpenter below.)

Dave Weiss has repeated the claim many times.

The later retellings promote Carpenter's nameless navigators into a South American observatory at 30° south. Dave has seen the reports. He also cannot verify the reports, has not seen the star, and cannot remember the observatory. See #The observatory Dave can't name.

The observatory Dave can't name

Carpenter said the star had been seen "more than 20 degrees south of the equator" and cited nobody. Dave improved the citation by adding a building. The building is at 30 degrees south. It is in South America. It saw Polaris many times, on clear nights. Then they shut it down, which is handy, because a closed observatory cannot be asked what it saw. The records survived. Dave has read them. Dave has also not read anything he can check. It depends which night you caught the show.

On Half Empty Cup of Joe in December 2023 the dossier was complete:

there used to be an observatory 30° South in South America that could see Polaris on a clear night and they shut down that Observatory but the stats are still there

"The stats are still there" is the whole bibliography.

On Under the Dough he swore he had seen the file and, in the same breath, that the file cannot be checked:

there's been reports of seeing Polaris at 30 degrees south. I've seen the reports. Haven't seen it myself. Can't verify it.

Seen the reports. Hasn't seen the star. Can't verify the reports. Still "impossible on a globe." That is a lot of certainty to stack on a document he cannot verify and an observatory whose name slips his mind. On The Matrix Minds he said the quiet part out loud:

I forget the name of the observatory. 30 degrees south in South America. Can see Polaris. That's impossible on a ball.

Forgetting the name is the citation. He tells it the same way when he is sure: an observatory that "got shut down," 30 degrees south in South America, Polaris "many times on clear nights"; an observatory that "reportedly saw Polaris a whole bunch of times," after which the scientists, in his version, panicked and blamed refraction. A high-school student who wanted to study astronomy asked where this had been documented. Dave answered by saying again that it had been documented. On the Watertown show the same ghost evidence had been filmed from 20 degrees south, ten degrees and one verb away from the other version, still with no observatory, no film, and no name.

The places a person might mean by "an observatory at 30° south in South America" are all still open. None of them published a Polaris sighting, and none was closed for having one:

• Cerro Tololo in Chile, 30°10′ S, open since 1965.
• Gemini South, SOAR, and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón, about 30°14′ S, next door to Tololo.
• The National Observatory at Córdoba, 31°25′ S, open since 1871, and its Bosque Alegre station at 31°36′ S.
• CASLEO at El Leoncito, Argentina, about 31°48′ S.

The one paper that says "polar star" and "Cerro Tololo" in the same breath is Merle F. Walker, polar star-trail seeing observations, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 83 (1971). Read past the title. The Chile and Australia runs did not photograph Polaris. Walker aimed the camera at Sigma Octantis, a magnitude-5.5 star beside the south celestial pole, because Polaris is not up. The northern sites in that paper (Kitt Peak, Flagstaff, San Pedro Mártir) are the ones that trailed the North Star. "Polar star-trail" is a trick for measuring bad air. It is not a Chilean log of Polaris.

Milton Updegraff lived at Córdoba from 1887 to 1890, visited La Plata and Santiago, and wrote the observatories up. He saw Polaris later, from a ship, at latitude 15° north. A man who had just spent two years at the observatory nearest this claim saw the North Star where a globe says he should: well north of the equator.

At 30° south the north celestial pole is 30° below the horizon. Polaris sits about 0.7° off that pole, so its best altitude is still roughly 29° underground. Refraction can lift a star on the horizon by about half a degree, which is why Polaris can, just barely, scrape into view from a bit over 1° south of the equator, and from nowhere near 30°. Half a degree is one Moon-width. The shut-down observatory needs about sixty of those, and then a closure order for buildings that are still taking pictures of the southern sky.

Samuel Rowbotham

Samuel Rowbotham incorrectly citing the Times column to support his claims.

The claim originally comes from Samuel Rowbotham's Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe from 1865:

If the Earth is a sphere and the pole star hangs over the northern axis, it would be impossible to see it for a single degree beyond the equator, or 90 degrees from the pole. The line-of-sight would become a tangent to the sphere, and consequently several thousand miles out of and divergent from the direction of the pole-star. Many cases, however, are on record of the north polar star being visible far beyond the equator, as far even as the tropic of Capricorn. In the Times newspaper of May 13, 1862, under the head of "Naval and Military Intelligence," it is stated that Captain Wilkins distinctly saw the Southern Cross and the polar star at midnight in 23.53 degrees of latitude, and longitude 35.46. This would be utterly impossible if the Earth were a globe.

However, Rowbotham's only cited source does not say the observation took place at a southern latitude:

On the 19th of April, in lat. 23.53, long. 35.46, Capt. Wilkins reports that the southern cross and polar star were both distinctly visible at midnight.

Times column "Naval and Military Intelligence" from May 13, 1862

Rowbotham originally wrote under the pseudonym "Parallax." Here is what J. Dyer had to say in The Spherical Form of the Earth: a Reply to Parallax (1870), page 59:

If Parallax had given the particulars as they are stated in the "Times," any one might have said it was not at the Tropic of Capricorn that Captain Wilkins saw these heavenly bodies. … The longitude must have been west. And the latitude was doubtless north, near the Tropic of Cancer, for had it been south, the ship would have been near the coast of South America, not far from Rio Janeiro, and therefore 36 degrees of longitude out of the usual track of ships from the Cape to England; that being about one degree east longitude when crossing the Tropic of Capricorn.

The Southern Cross and the North Polar Star can both be seen at midnight from the Tropic of Cancer, and it must have been from this position that Captain Wilkins saw them. From this latitude the former would appear about 24 degrees above the horizon in the north, and the latter about 9 degrees above the horizon in the south.

Respecting this matter, Parallax not only asserts that which is erroneous, and makes it appear that Captain Wilkins favours his views, but at page 42 of his book he has given a diagram to illustrate the subject. … In a school-boy these [mistakes] would be justly censured, if not followed with some kind of punishment; but in a person of Parallax's pretensions—one who has for years being going about the country parading his knowledge of mathematics before mankind, and everywhere throwing down the gauntlet before mathematicians—it is perfectly ridiculous.

William Carpenter

A direct proselyte of Rowbotham, William Carpenter, repeated this claim in his book One Hundred Proofs:

The astronomers' theory of a globular Earth necessitates the conclusion that, if we travel south of the equator, to see the North Star is an impossibility. Yet it is well known this star has been seen by navigators when they have been more than 20 degrees south of the equator.

Carpenter gave no citations for this claim, and almost certainly got it from Rowbotham.