NavList:

Frank
Re: SD=0°.2724HP.  I wondered about that, because, as you say, 0.2724 is simply a factor.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re working in degrees, minutes, radians, or milli-rads.  The answer you get out will be in the same units you go in with.  Just to check, I selected a NA Daily Page at random and multiplied the minutes value for Moon HP at noon by 0.2727.  Sure enough, the value I got out was the minutes value of Moon SD printed at the bottom of the page.

So why does the NA write 0°.2724?  If you read from the start of the section, the Direct Method appears to be aimed at the non-expert computer user working with an early spreadsheet or programmable calculator, where there were clearly advantages working with a single unit, decimal degrees, rather than degrees and minutes.   I’m speculating, but I think 0°.2724 is meant to be read.  If you intend to use SD=0.2724HP in your computer calculation, make sure that at some stage you convert the value of SD to decimal degrees if that’s the unit your using for all your other variables.  DaveP