NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Sextant Errors
From: Robert Eno
Date: 2002 Jun 22, 19:14 -0400
From: Robert Eno
Date: 2002 Jun 22, 19:14 -0400
I am somewhat ashamed to ask this question, having been
a sextant user for many years, but here goes:
1. What are the consequences of not having the index
mirror exactly perpendicular to the sextant frame (error of
perpendicularity)?
2. What are the practical consequences of not totally
eliminating side error?
I should add that a very experienced instrument
repair man (now deceased) from Baltimore once told me that in fact having a bit
of side error was beneficial, particularly when using a star to determine index
error; the rational being that it is much easier to judge when the star images
are side by side rather than superimposed. My own experience tells me that
the latter is true but does not answer my original
question.
Can anyone answer the above two questions? I have
yet to see a navigation text that actually addresses this.
Cheers,
Robert
