NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Nautical astronomy was different
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2004 Oct 22, 13:16 -0600
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2004 Oct 22, 13:16 -0600
On 22 Oct 2004 at 14:50, Jared Sherman wrote: > Bruce Stark- > "The best method of regulating a chronometer at sea, is by > ...[observations]...[to] show how much it is too fast or > slow." > > Well, making observations is only the first part of regulating a > chronometer. To a navigator, the chronometer might be sacrosanct and you > might only want to note the inaccuracy of the instrument. The way I read the passage from Bowditch that Bruce cites is that the navigator of old regulates the chronometer by bringing it into unison with local apparent time. The error in the mechanism is immaterial since LAT is constantly changing due to the movement of the navigator. Since the local time is only known approximately anyway, there is no need to worry over the running of the mechanism itself (within limits). Presumably this is a different chronometer than the one being used to track Greenwich time, being used just as a common watch was before chronometers were available. Ken Muldrew.
