NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Jeremy C
Date: 2011 Apr 23, 14:46 -0400
Just how much of a difference is there between a sight taken with a 4x40mm scope with a perfect horizon using a whole horizon mirror as compared to a sight tube with a hazy horizon and a split mirror ? Below are my results.
U.S. Navy MK 3 with whole horizon mirror and 4x40mm scope making ten observations of Sirius during evening twilight onto a very sharp horizon.
-Avg. intercept from shoreside chart position of 0.5' moa with a scatter of 0.7' moa (8 kts. of wind)
Cassens & Plath with split horizon mirror and sight tube making ten observations of an afternoon Sun onto a hazy but sharp horizon.-Avg. intercept from shoreside chart position of 0.8' moa with a scatter of 2.7' moa (8 kts. of wind)
Comments- It only took ten minutes to make ten observations using the whole horizon mirror vs. fifteen minutes to make ten observations with the split horizon mirror. The scope can be focused to a sharp image where the sight tube requires squinting and blinking to maintain an equivalent sharpness. Rocking the sextant is noticeably easier with the whole horizon mirror. Even though accuracies of the two sets of observations are close the scatter is four times larger with the sight tube thus making the 4x40mm scope the better choice for single observations.
Greg Rudzinski
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