NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2009 Dec 17, 23:43 -0800
Bruce, you wrote:
" I know from time to time the list members come up with ideas on sextant improvements, and I was wondering if it would be possible to make the cloud cover a non-issue."
Sure. Put a tall mast amidships, let's say 40,000 feet high, and then you send the guy with the sextant up the rigging... :->
You mentioned surveyors shooting Polaris in daylight. The stars can definitely be detected in daylight. They're there. They're not fainter. But their faint signal sits on top of the bright daylight sky background. It's hard to pick out. Unfortunately, clouds are a different problem. With rare exceptions, clouds thoroughly scatter all light that passes through them. Even finding the position of the Sun through anything but very thin clouds is hopeless except in rare cases (or using wavelengths far outside the visual spectrum).
-FER
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