NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Green Flash and Longitude
From: Bruce Stark
Date: 2006 Jan 4, 16:22 EST
From: Bruce Stark
Date: 2006 Jan 4, 16:22 EST
Frank,
You wrote:
I can't think of any way to make sense of the idea (green flash for
longitude??), . . .
This suggests that you've come to the point where your first inclination is to see the time-longitude problem from the same perspective as the eighteenth and early nineteenth century navigators. To my knowledge, no history of navigation has yet been written by anyone who's at ease in that way of thinking. I hope you'll consider writing such a history yourself.
Anyone hard wired in the twentieth century way of thinking will immediately see that by noting the time of a Green Flash (should you be so lucky as to see one) you'd have the makings of a longitude LOP. How accurate it would be is another question.
Bruce
You wrote:
I can't think of any way to make sense of the idea (green flash for
longitude??), . . .
This suggests that you've come to the point where your first inclination is to see the time-longitude problem from the same perspective as the eighteenth and early nineteenth century navigators. To my knowledge, no history of navigation has yet been written by anyone who's at ease in that way of thinking. I hope you'll consider writing such a history yourself.
Anyone hard wired in the twentieth century way of thinking will immediately see that by noting the time of a Green Flash (should you be so lucky as to see one) you'd have the makings of a longitude LOP. How accurate it would be is another question.
Bruce
