NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
"Latitude"questions
From: Doug Royer
Date: 2003 Sep 26, 13:02 -0700
From: Doug Royer
Date: 2003 Sep 26, 13:02 -0700
I am reading my copy of the book "Latitude" and have some questions on 2 subjects I ran across. On pages 61 thru 64 a method for the "telegraphing of correcting longitude" useing a telegram is explained.All well and good.For those who don't have the book here is a short explaination of the method.Each station used to relay the time was equiped with a chrono,telegraph key,telescope that would rotate 180* on it's verticle axis and a cylendrical record.At every 2 sec. of time the chrono would cause a tick to be recorded on the record as would every minute be recorded as a double tick.The observer would then use the special telescope and observe a celestial body's movement in the reticle.As the body crossed a series of lines in the reticle the observer would depress a telegraph key which would also record a tick on the record.Then the observer would then reverse the scope 180* on the verticle plane and repeat the proceedure to cancel certain errors and allow corrections to be computed for others.I cannot visualize this scope.Can anyone help? On pages 84 and 85 it states that in 1896 the rules governing the nomemclature of variable stars were inconsistant at the time.The locations of the stars were expressed by R.A. and Declination.All well and good so far.Here's where I get lost:"in Seth Chandler's system the designation of a variable star was obtained by dividing by ten the number of secounds in its R.A. during the year 1900". As like Forrest Gump I can say "I am not a smart man" but this statement has me totally baffled! Can someone in the list please explain what is being conveyed as I don't understand what 1900 has in common with 1896. Thanks for any insights you can give me.