Star of the North: An explosive thriller set in North Korea

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A thrilling tale of abduction and escape in North Korea….highly entertaining.” —The Washington Post Kamper, Karl W. (June 1996). "Polaris Today". Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. 90: 140. Bibcode: 1996JRASC..90..140K. This means they’re so far to the north that they don’t rise and set as other stars do, and they don’t come and go with the seasons. Locate the Big Dipper. Begin by identifying the Big Dipper, which is one of the most recognizable constellations in the northern sky. Look for a formation of seven bright stars that comprise the “dipper” shape: Four stars form the "bowl" and three form the "handle."

By watching the motion of Polaris A’s companion star, Polaris Ab, astronomers expect to learn not only the stars’ orbits but also their masses. Measuring the mass of a star is one of the most difficult tasks.

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Apart from being the guiding star, the North Star also played a role in history and religious beliefs of different cultures. a b Neilson, H. R.; Engle, S. G.; Guinan, E.; Langer, N.; Wasatonic, R. P.; Williams, D. B. (2012). "The Period Change of the Cepheid Polaris Suggests Enhanced Mass Loss". The Astrophysical Journal. 745 (2): L32. arXiv: 1201.0761. Bibcode: 2012ApJ...745L..32N. doi: 10.1088/2041-8205/745/2/L32. S2CID 118625176. Star of The North reads like a cross between Child-44 and I am Pilgrim and is every bit as good as both of them. Read this book and you will not only feel that you've been to North Korea you will also never, ever want to go there. Brutally realistic, fascinatingly detailed, it's a fantastic thriller whose fantasy is all the more powerful for being based on truth. Simon Toyne, bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy and Solomon Creed series As you travel northward, Polaris climbs higher in the sky. If you go as far north as the North Pole, you’ll see Polaris directly overhead. An older English name, attested since the 14th century, is lodestar "guiding star", cognate with the Old Norse leiðarstjarna, Middle High German leitsterne. [46]

The Hipparcos spacecraft used stellar parallax to take measurements from 1989 and 1993 with the accuracy of 0.97 milliarcseconds (970 microarcseconds), and it obtained accurate measurements for stellar distances up to 1,000pc away. [58] The Hipparcos data was examined again with more advanced error correction and statistical techniques. [2] Despite the advantages of Hipparcos astrometry, the uncertainty in its Polaris data has been pointed out and some researchers have questioned the accuracy of Hipparcos when measuring binary Cepheids like Polaris. [9] The Hipparcos reduction specifically for Polaris has been re-examined and reaffirmed but there is still not widespread agreement about the distance. [59] a b c d Vallenari, A.; etal. (Gaia collaboration) (2023). "Gaia Data Release 3. Summary of the content and survey properties". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 674: A1. arXiv: 2208.00211. Bibcode: 2023A&A...674A...1G. doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202243940. S2CID 244398875. Gaia DR3 record for this source at VizieR. Bond, Howard E; Nelan, Edmund P; Remage Evans, Nancy; Schaefer, Gail H; Harmer, Dianne (2018). "Hubble Space Telescope Trigonometric Parallax of Polaris B, Companion of the Nearest Cepheid". The Astrophysical Journal. 853 (1): 55. arXiv: 1712.08139. Bibcode: 2018ApJ...853...55B. doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aaa3f9. S2CID 118875464. The period, roughly 4 days, has also changed over time. It has steadily increased by around 4.5 seconds per year except for a hiatus in 1963–1965. This was originally thought to be due to secular redward (lower temperature) evolution across the Cepheid instability strip, but it may be due to interference between the primary and the first- overtone pulsation modes. [20] [29] [30] Authors disagree on whether Polaris is a fundamental or first-overtone pulsator and on whether it is crossing the instability strip for the first time or not. [12] [30] [31] The apparent motion of Polaris towards and, in the future, away from the celestial pole, is due to the precession of the equinoxes. [35] The celestial pole will move away from α UMi after the 21st century, passing close by Gamma Cephei by about the 41st century, moving towards Deneb by about the 91st century.Bowditch, Nathaniel; National Imagery and Mapping Agency (2002). "15". The American practical navigator: an epitome of navigation. Paradise Cay Publications. p.248. ISBN 978-0-939837-54-0.

John’s achievement is to embed these revelations in a vivid, convincing thriller. Long passages of undigested research are mercifully absent and it never feels like a mere pretext for an info-dump John Dugdale, Sunday Times John uses three memorable primary characters to tell a remarkable story about the most opaque country on Earth: North Korea … The lives of these people collide in a harrowing thriller that exposes an amazingly corrupt regime that embraces savage brutality and nearly every kind of lucrative criminal enterprise … a superior thriller. Booklist a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Evans, N. R.; Schaefer, G. H.; Bond, H. E.; Bono, G.; Karovska, M.; Nelan, E.; Sasselov, D.; Mason, B. D. (2008). "Direct Detection of the Close Companion of Polaris with The Hubble Space Telescope". The Astronomical Journal. 136 (3): 1137. arXiv: 0806.4904. Bibcode: 2008AJ....136.1137E. doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/136/3/1137. S2CID 16966094.The star Polaris (α UMi) is called the North Star because it’s very close to, though not exactly on, the north celestial pole. The single point of light that we see as Polaris is a triple star system, or three stars orbiting a common center of mass. The primary star, Polaris A, is a supergiant with about six times the mass of our sun. A close companion, Polaris Ab, orbits 2 billion miles from Polaris. You are unlikely to ever see this star, because it is too close to Polaris. Kluge, Friedrich; Götze, Alfred (1943). Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. Walter de Gruyter. p.355. ISBN 978-3-111-67185-7. The so-called Indestructibles were circumpolar stars that never seem too set, as they simply circle around the North Pole. No wonder, they also became a metaphor for the afterlife, eternity, and the destination of the dead king’s soul. Just think of the Egyptian pyramids as a gateway to the stars, though the said alignment was only accurate for a few years around 2,500 BCE.