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Frank,
Every time I learn about some interesting file in
http://www.historicalatlas.com/lunars/
I wonder: how could I find this file myself?
Is it possible to see a complete listing of this directory somehow?
For example, you said you posted Chauvenet.
How can the people who have not read that message to the list
find this out? Same about lunar game. You seem to have so many
interesting hidden files there...

On Tue, 2 Nov 2004, Frank Reed wrote:

> A related game: are there circumstances under
> which you can navigate
> celestially without any timepiece at all?
> (yes, rarely and not very well: see the
> "Lunars Game" I mentioned in another post)

You mean, without a SEXTANT and without a timepiece?
(With a sextant, it is easy: take meridian altitudes
for your latitude and lunars for longitude).

> Another related game: are there circumstances under
> which you can navigate
> celestially without a sextant, without a timepiece,
> AND without an almanac (of
> any type)?

This seems really hard... But what are the precise conditions
of the game? Am I allowed to measure any angles at all?
say with the instruments I make myself? I can make a primitive
quadrant of a piece of cardboard, for example.
Or a gnomon to measure Sun's altitudes.
And what do you mean "to navigate"? Are lonmg-term experiments
permited (running many days at the same place)?

> "technological artifact" that is most
> difficult to do without...

With this I agree. The main "advance in technology" related
to Cel Nav was not the invention of chronometer,
and not the invention of sextant or any other hardware,
but the knowledge
which
permits to make a nautical almanac.

Alex.

   

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