NavList:
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: Stan K
Date: 2017 Oct 4, 22:04 -0400
From: Stan K
Date: 2017 Oct 4, 22:04 -0400
Taking a night/twilight sight of a full or largely illuminated moon is not recommended because the illumination of the water by the moonlight almost always makes a false horizon appear below the moon.
Stan
-----Original Message-----
From: Jing C <NoReply_JingC@fer3.com>
To: slk1000 <slk1000@aol.com>
Sent: Wed, Oct 4, 2017 7:10 pm
Subject: [NavList] Full moon sights and lifeboat sextant accuracy
From: Jing C <NoReply_JingC@fer3.com>
To: slk1000 <slk1000@aol.com>
Sent: Wed, Oct 4, 2017 7:10 pm
Subject: [NavList] Full moon sights and lifeboat sextant accuracy
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?
