NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Northing correction to Noon longitudes.
From: Bill Noyce
Date: 2005 Jun 7, 12:18 -0400
From: Bill Noyce
Date: 2005 Jun 7, 12:18 -0400
Frank's method requires adjusting each sight for the combined motion of the vessel and sun toward or away from each other on a north/south line. He described it as moving the points before noon one way, and the points after noon the opposite way. George asked how "noon" is identified, since that's one of the unknowns we're looking for. As far as latitude is concerned, this procedure is no different from the normal procedure of "advancing all sights to a common time", so the resulting latitude is the vessel's latitude at the time chosen for the zero adjustment (which is probably not local noon). I hope this much is obvious. Note that the declination to be used in computing latitude is the one for the chosen zero time, not the one where the highest (adjusted) altitude was plotted. The longitude that results from the paper-folding exercise is the vessel's longitude when it and the sun were on the same meridian (i.e., when local noon occurred at the vessel). If you're traveling mostly east or west, you could assume the latitude measurement is also valid for this moment. Conversely if you're traveling mostly north or south, you could consider this longitude to be valid for the moment at which you measured your latitude. If you're only moving a mile or two every 10 minutes, you could choose to ignore the difference. Or you could advance or retard the longitude or latitude measurement to the time of the other one. It's unfortunate (for us pedants) that the the two results don't naturally correspond to the same time... -- Bill