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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Buying a sextant- a cautionary tale.
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2006 Apr 30, 20:17 -0400
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2006 Apr 30, 20:17 -0400
Bill, > To satisfy my curiosity, what was you IC > with traditional sun and stars IE checks vs. your current IC using star > pairs. Stars, traditional, -0.2 (most of the time) Sun traditional, vertical or horizontal -0.3 Orion belt, about 2d 40' apart -0.6 Castor-Pollux -0.7 All other star-to star distances from 18d to 104d become almost perfect if one uses IC= -0.8 This indicates that the arc is non-uniform on the interval from 0 to 4d, and it is OK after that. I would be satisfied with this conclusion if not the Freiberger (and Cassens/Plath) tests that say that the arc is good everywhere. As you know, I experienced the problem BOTH before and after Freiberger/CP tests. The only thing that remains to finally solve the question is to lend the sextant to some really experienced guy with good eyes who would care to make star-to-star tests to confirm my observations:-) But of course, it is a scandal if both Freiberger and CP tests are so bad... Alex.
