NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Venus Lunars
From: Jeremy C
Date: 2010 Apr 16, 19:49 EDT
From: Jeremy C
Date: 2010 Apr 16, 19:49 EDT
Frank wrote:
I'll have to take a look at his spreadsheet again. I seem to recall
there was some other Venus issue, but maybe I'm wrong.
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I would love for you to do that, since I am now comparing Peter
Hankel's spreadsheet with Mr. Pearson's as well as the StarPilot calculator for
lunars. I am finding that the calculator doesn't seem to like planets and
stars and always gives me gross errors. The instructions are minimal and
the calculator doesn't use the standard "near" or "far" but "inner," "outer" and
"center." I am getting excellent sun/moon lunars now with all of them, but
the calculator didn't do well with Jupiter or Anatares. I don't know
why. I am also wondering if you are still planning on some sort of
stand alone version of your program as the internet is spotty here.
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Frank wrote: What magnification is your telescope? Could you post the dates when you've shot some successful Moon-Venus lunars (just the dates is enough)?
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I use a Celestaire 7x scope at all times these days. With Venus i
typically use the perceived center of the body. As for dates they were 13
June, 9 through 15 July, 8 through 15 September all 2009.
You added:
"The sun lunars were terrible for some reason, but for whatever reason, I am doing much better with them on this trip."Sometimes there's just plain old luck. :)
I don't believe in luck in this stuff. Something was wrong and it
bothers me that i can't figure out what it was. Nothing was wrong with my
technique as it hasn't changed and the errors have gone from 15 minutes down to
low fractions of a minute. It was a major reason i went looking for
alternative reduction methods.
In a slightly unrelated topic, I am looking to release my navigational log
from last year but need to break it down as the file is a 54 MB pdf and that is
a bit too much. I just need to figure out good breaking
points. I would also love to work with you Frank to see if you can't
produce one of your voyage maps as an illustration for my book. I have
noon positions for every day we were underway so it shouldn't be too
difficult.
Jeremy