NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Lunars: Jupiter's BIG.
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2003 Dec 24, 11:49 -0500
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2003 Dec 24, 11:49 -0500
George certainly manages to mangle the last consonant in my surname in some interesting ways! Jan Kalivada recently posted some data from a German publication. Now I am sure they were taken from steam-powered ships, but I wonder how different it would have been from the quarterdeck of Nelson's Victory or similar large sailing ships. There have been some posts on list list about lunars from masters of some of the sail training ships, which should be relevant, as opposed to experience on small yachts. Fred Hebard On Dec 24, 2003, at 11:14 AM, George Huxtable wrote: > Fred Hebarf wrote- >> In answer to various claims about the accuracy of lunars, it would >> seem >> to me that the error in lunars should approach the precision of the >> sextant, given enough measurements of decent quality and decent >> reduction procedures. That would be 0.1 to 0.2' of arc, or 12-24 >> seconds. > > That may be what Fred can reliably achieve on land, with a stable > platform > beneath his feet. It's rather better than could be expected at sea, in > the > size of vessel that was used in the heyday of lunars.
