NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: On improving data
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2003 Jan 17, 10:30 -0800
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2003 Jan 17, 10:30 -0800
On Friday, January 17, 2003, at 10:17 AM, Peter Fogg wrote: > The rate a celestial body appears to rise or fall over a 5 minute > period > can be expressed as a sloping line on a graph. If the sights taken (as > many as possible of the same body over the 5 minutes*) are plotted > above > this line then a second line can be drawn parallel which best fits the > pattern of sights - they should also rise or fall. Then any point along > this 'line of best fit' can be used for the 'time/sextant altitude' > data. > Any sights that are wildly off are ignored, so unlike 'averaging' they > make no contribution to the result. Thanks Peter: this is exactly the kind of insight I was looking for! I'll have to try this on my next round of sights. Dan
