NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Astronomy and Celestial Navigation
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2006 Jun 4, 03:34 -0400
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2006 Jun 4, 03:34 -0400
Dear Guy, > I wonder how many of the list participant are also into astronomy? > In addition was it astronomy that got you interested > in Cel Nav or was it Cel nav that got you interested in astronomy? I am interested in both. Probably the interest in astronomy came first. There were few times in my youth when I seriously considered astronomy as a profession. As a student I visited one of the main observatories in Soviet Union (Burakan in Armenia) and professional astronomers there explained me that modern astronomers to not look at the stars and galaxies through a telescope at night anymore:-) That they live in the city, do calculations (on computers) and look only on photographs. And photographs are taken by "lab technicians", or automatically. And I decided not to try to become a professional astronomer. Even earlier, in the late 60-s, I considered a profession of a navigator. But the spread of calculators (first) and satellites (second) convinced me that this profession will shortly become extinct (or not so interesting). So I became a math teacher... Later I moved to the US, and discovered this list Nav-L, and understood that one can still practice Cel Nav as a hobby:-) I have neither a boat nor a telescope, and always lived very far from any sea. But I travel a lot and use every opportunity for sailing, stargazing or to looking into a telescope, and practice Cel Nav from my balcony. Alex.