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Ignoring issues like the actual visibility of bodies, etc, it would seem
to me to be possible to develop a device like this.   Man-made
satellites have included positioning systems that use celestial "sights"
for satellite orientation for decades.  My understanding is that they
obtain arc-second accuracy.

Lu Abel

Fred Hebard wrote:
> Hopefully, Paul Hirose will jump in here.  To my understanding,
> they've had these gadgets for a while now.
>
>
> On Nov 24, 2007, at 8:47 PM, Guy Schwartz wrote:
>
>
>>I was bopping around the USNO web site and ran across this:
>>Celestial Navigation
>> A device that automatically observes stars, day or night, with
>>respect to the local gravity vector (i.e., the true "down"
>>direction), could provide a high-precision location and attitude
>>solution for ships and aircraft, independent of GPS. Two prototype
>>units with different designs have been constructed, one that
>>operates in the far-red optical part of the spectrum, the other in
>>the near-infrared. Accuracies better than 100 meters in position
>>and several arcseconds in attitude should eventually be achievable
>>with such devices. This project is jointly managed by the U.S.
>>Naval Observatory in Washington and the Navy's SPAWAR System Center
>>in San Diego. The prototype units were built by two California
>>contractors. A follow-up device is being built for surveying
>>applications (fixed points on land) by one of the contractors,
>>funded by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The
>>feasibility of using similar devices to precisely align Navy Aegis
>>ship radar is also being investigated.
>>
>>The navigation software for the project is based on some innovative
>>algorithms for celestial navigation developed at the Naval
>>Observatory about a decade ago. These algorithms are based on the
>>solution to a familiar astronomical problem - determining the orbit
>>of a body from a series of observations. In this case, the body in
>>question is a ship and its "orbit" is a rhumb-line track over the
>>spheroidal surface of the Earth.
>>
>>Anyone know anything about it or if it works:
>>
>>Guy
>>
>>
>>
>>No virus found in this outgoing message.
>>Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>>Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.6/1150 - Release Date:
>>11/24/2007 5:58 PM
>>
>>
>>
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