NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Captain Cook & celestial navigation
From: Rafael C. Caruso
Date: 2020 Jan 22, 08:35 -0800
From: Rafael C. Caruso
Date: 2020 Jan 22, 08:35 -0800
I just received the March 2020 issue of Sky & Telescope, which features an article on celestial navigation during Captain Cook's voyages. As it is targeted to amateur astronomers rather than to navigators, amateurs or professionals, it may be a bit elementary for the NavList membership. Still, I was interested in reading about the use of both the lunar distances method and of Kendall's K1 chronometer (which, if I remember correctly, was an exact copy of Harrison's H4 chronometer) during the voyages. The article also has a sentence with the usual critique of Nevil Maskelyne's anti-chronometer bias, which is apparently mandatory.