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I thought it might be interesting to get a conversation going about Amelia 
Earhart's navigation --really Fred Noonan's navigation-- on their ill-fated 
circum-navigation back in 1937. There's a movie opening this week, "Amelia", 
produced by and starring Hilary Swank as Earhart. It's getting beat up pretty 
bad in the early reviews (currently at a dismal 22% fresh on 
RottenTomatoes.com: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/amelia_2009/), but I'm 
sure many of us will see it eventually.

So... I know next to nothing about their navigation. Gary Lapook knows lots, 
and I expect I'm setting you up for some typing, Gary. :-)

I'll just start off with some basic questions: what kind of sextant did they 
carry on that flight? Did they have multiple instruments? Were their 
different instruments during various legs of the flight? At what altitude 
would sights have been taken (or did it matter)? I remember a discussion a 
few years ago of a proposed theory claiming that Noonan didn't understand the 
correction for the Moon's parallax... that theory struck me as pretty 
light-weight at the time. Can we dismiss it? Did Earhart herself know any 
celestial navigation?

Thanks in advance to any and all who can fill me in on this.

-FER
PS: Hey, Gary: when you visited Mystic back in 2008, did you get a chance to 
drive by the house where Amelia married George Putnam in Noank?



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