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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Lunars - Nov. 11th, 2014
From: Sean C
Date: 2014 Nov 12, 23:05 -0800
From: Sean C
Date: 2014 Nov 12, 23:05 -0800
Shot a few more lunars the other day. This time using Jupiter. After working them out, I began to wonder about the effect of planetary motion on the accuracy of lunars. Specifically, I wondered if a lunar might be noticably more accurate if a planet in retrograde were used while the distance was decreasing. My reasoning was that the motion of the planet "toward" the Moon would add to the rate of decrease, allowing a finer interpolation of the time. After some investigating, I found that the maximum change in rate was only around 3 or 4 arc minutes per hour.
Is that right, or did I miss something?
-Sean C.
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