NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: ex-meridian sights
From: Nigel Gardner
Date: 2001 Feb 14, 3:44 PM
From: Nigel Gardner
Date: 2001 Feb 14, 3:44 PM
It should perhaps be remembered that when ex-meridians came into use from the mid-nineteenth century on, very little graphical chartwork was used. Latitude by mer-alt (or ex-meridian) and Longitude by long-chron were worked up by traverse tables to give the noon position. Regarding sights when the sun is near the zenith, zenith fixes are a handy way of getting a fix. Admittedly I have only done a couple, one in the Pacific near the Line islands and the other in the Indian Ocean (both from aircratf). The trick is to get three sights with the azimuths about 60deg apart, plot the sub solar point for each sight (GHA and dec) and using the corrected ZD of each as radii plot three arcs of position; transfer the p/l's for course and distance run and Bob's your uncle. The real problem is the glare and making sure the sextant is vertical. NG