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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Full moon sights and lifeboat sextant accuracy
From: Hewitt Schlereth
Date: 2017 Oct 4, 19:00 -0700
From: Hewitt Schlereth
Date: 2017 Oct 4, 19:00 -0700
Jing, here are the intercepts I got on Sunday October 1 with a Davis Mk. 3. The technique I used was to set the sun a little above the horizon and wait for it to graze the horizon.
+2.2'
-0.1'
+3.4'
+0.2'
+3.7'
Hewitt
San Diego CA
I was doing sights of the sun and moon on a dock yesterday, using a Davis Mk3 "lifeboat" sextant and was about 26 miles off as compared to GPS. So I was curious, for people who have used that sextant before, what kind of accuracies were you able to obtain?
Also, I vaguely remember reading somewhere that taking sights of a full moon (as opposed to a crescent moon) was not recommended as it for some reason decreased accuracy. I can't seem to find a reference anywhere to this, does anyone know if this is true, and why?
