NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Historical sextant angular units
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2025 Nov 8, 13:57 +0000
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2025 Nov 8, 13:57 +0000
Of course I was not talking of bubble sextants;
There was no need in them during French revolution:-)
And certainly the French had to remake all astronomical tables for the use with decimal degrees. Possibly this was one pf the reasons why
Decimal degrees did not live long.
Alex.
From: NavList@navlist.net <NavList@navlist.net> on behalf of NavList Community <NavList@navlist.net>
Sent: Friday, November 7, 2025 8:35 PM
To: Alexandre Eremenko <eremenko@purdue.edu>
Subject: [NavList] Re: Historical sextant angular units
Sent: Friday, November 7, 2025 8:35 PM
To: Alexandre Eremenko <eremenko@purdue.edu>
Subject: [NavList] Re: Historical sextant angular units
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Re: Historical sextant angular units
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2025 Nov 7, 15:18 -0800
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2025 Nov 7, 15:18 -0800
I have never heard of a bubble sextant reading anything but degrees and minutes. Decimal degrees would be incompatible with sight reduction tables. Seconds, seen on some old marine sextants, are not a problem since you can mentally convert to decimal minutes with sufficient accuracy. http://sofajpl.com/airnav/index.html -- Paul Hirose sofajpl.com
