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Dr. Kolbe wrote:

I am off to the Libyan desert at the end of March to see the total eclipse
which has its maximum period of totality in the Southern Sahara. I will
then be spending a couple of weeks wandering around the South Eastern
Libyan desert with a group looking at various natural wonders, and
finishing off at Gebel Uweinat on the Libya Egypt border to see some
Saharan rock art.

The group will naturally have GPS receivers to keep them found, but that
need not stop me using celestial navigation to plot our progress - and
amuse the rest of the group showing them how it was done "in the old days"!

Of course, due to the high temperatures (40 to 50 Centigrade) corrections
will have to me made to the standard Altitude Correction tables. But it
occurred to me that the Refraction Correction Tables for Non Standard
Conditions in the Nautical Almanac may not be appropriate in the middle of
the Sahara, where the hot sand will bake the air near the ground.

Does anyone have any data on altitude corrections for desert conditions?

I spend a good deal of time in the deserts of the American Southwest in the
last 2 years. During all seasons. I do play around, when the whim strikes
me, using CN to find a position when hiking/traveling cross country.
I use a Palm OS type NA and reduction program where one may input the
temperature of the time when the cut is taken. The accuracy of my positions
are relative. Sometimes not so close and sometimes very close to the
corresponding gps pos. I do this to lighten up the weight of my kit. PDAs
are smaller and lighter than a paper NA. I carry a wrist and stop watch, a
small pad of notepaper and pencil, an Astra IIIB sextant for the most part,
and a home made glass AH.
Now, in all fairness, I use neither the paper NA nor reduce any of the data
by hand. I just allow the software to do all the reductions.
So basically what I do is note the DR pos, the time when the sight is shot
and of what body (usually the Sun), and input that into the program to
obtain an LOP.
Another interesting wrinkle I use that may contribute to the accuracy or
inaccuracy of the positions obtained is using software to again convert the
Lat. - Long. Coordinates obtained into a UTM or MGRS coordinate because the
terrestrial coordinates of the projections I use are in that format. I have
found that when traveling cross country using this coordinate system instead
of lat-long I will have more "accurate" position represented on the 1:24,000
or 1:62,500 scale projections I use.

Good luck on your trip to the Libyan deserts.

   

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