positions/the positions/the definite article I came across these sentences on BBC. I know it should be "the positions" because it was written by a native English speaker but I just wonder why it's not just "positions" but "the positions". What follows after it isn't specific but just general celestial bodies or any celestial body so what made the author use "the positions"? thank you! ****** Things were trickiest over large bodies of water. With no radio beacons at all, pilots used dead reckoning, a navigational technique that uses the last known location to estimate the current location; and celestial navigation, which references 【the positions】of celestial bodies like the sun, moon or a planet, as they measure up with the visible horizon. Until the second half of the 20th Century, the flight crew on trans-oceanic flights often included what was known as a flight navigator, who relieved the pilot of the considerable burden of navigation. ******