NavList:

Since 2001 I have been running a web site devoted to New Zealand railway signalling. Over the past few years I have lost interest in the subject and  have done very little work on the site. I have been seriously considering saving myself some money by closing the site down. However, I have decided to take the site in a new direction - Astro.

There are plenty of sites explaining celnav, spherical trigonometry and the celestial sphere. I do not want to go down that route. I want to assume that the viewer understands these concepts. What I want to do (among other things) is explain some of the many sight reduction methods, giving worked examples.

I have spent the past day or so creating a template for such a site. I make no apology for the fact that it is a hand-coded, year 2000 era web site without mouse-overs or references to twitter and facebook and the other things which seem to be essential today. It is a specialist site where one visit a week from an enthusiast is more important to me than millions of hits.

I like my web pages to be accurate so I welcome being notified of any errors.

Currently the site consists of a home page describing how I understand Nautical Astronomy and a second page giving an example of how I intend to present information. I make no apology for using the term Astro because it reflects my heritage!

Go to:

http://valleysignals.org.nz/nautical_astronomy/astro.html

If you follow the Reduce the Sight link you will find details of how I determined my position using  On Finding The Latitude and Longitude In Cloudy Weather, Etc by AC Johnson. At a time when billions of people around the world are doing exactly the same thing (Rio) I get pleasure from knowing that probably I was the only person using Cloudy Weather Johnson's tables. Am I the first person in living memory to do so or have other forum members used the tables (rather than just glancing at them)?

Finally, if you get bored with cellnav then go to my home page and learn about NZ railway signalling (-;

I have created an email alias astro@valleysignals.co.nz  if you want to contact me off forum.