How to navigate a ringed planet at night?

I'm working on a story set in an Earth-like world but with rings (say, proportionately similar to Saturn's). I'm trying to get a solid handle on how these rings would affect the sky. For the purposes of this post, let's focus on navigation.

For a little more info, let's assume a location in the Northern Hemisphere, such as in the Midwest USA (Cincinnati, Nashville, Indianapolis, etc.). It's a generally medieval-type setting with no glow from modern city lights affecting the night sky. There are one sun and one moon. Assume similar axis tilt to Earth. There are 425.2 days per year (so a leap year every 5 years) and 28 hours per day. Moon rotation is every 24 days (a multiple of 8 was recommended for the calendar I did at fantasy-calendar.com; compare this to our own moon of about 27 days). ...Just in case any of this is helpful.

QUESTION: How would a person navigate at night in a world like this? For instance, would they be able to use something like a "North Star," or would the ring-glow block out most of the stars? Or maybe the rings would always appear in the south sky? Stuff like that. I'm interested in possible navigation tactics both by land and sea.

posted almost 6 years ago

Luminocity‭

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