Eberly expert Chris Palma, teaching professor of astronomy and astrophysics, weighs in.
15 January 2025
Disney's Moana depicts wayfinding — the process of orienting and traveling from place to place — as a main plot point in helping the Polynesian voyagers navigate across the ocean.
These explorers relied on the stars, the sun, and the ocean to determine where they needed to go.
One of our college's experts, Chris Palma, teaching professor of astronomy and astrophysics, weighed in about the accuracy of wayfinding as portrayed in Moana.
Palma also wrote an article about this, "In Disney’s ‘Moana,’ the characters navigate using the stars, just like real Polynesian explorers − an astronomer explains how these methods work." Read the article in the Conversation.