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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: CN on Mars
From: Robert VanderPol II
Date: 2016 Feb 6, 09:05 -0800
From: Robert VanderPol II
Date: 2016 Feb 6, 09:05 -0800
The New York Times best selling novel THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir has the main character Mark Watney making a sextant to determine latitude by Deneb and timing Phobos to determine longitude (page 288). Is the star Deneb a good choice for a pole star? His Mars made sextant should be good to half a degree where 30' would be better than 30 nautical mile precision.
Greg Rudzinski
Actually 0.5° angular measurement would result in about 16nm accuracy due to the smaller diameter of Mars.
