NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Bill Ritchie
Date: 2024 Aug 9, 10:39 -0700
I used Astron’s inter-body arc facility, which gives the minimum geocentric separation at 14:53:15 UT and a distance of 0° 18.3862′, or 0° 18′ 23.175″. It lists the distance at the input time, so I needed to spend about 3 minutes doing a poor man’s binary search (guessing and halving) to find the start and end times of when the minimum remained unchanged, then taking their mean. (Constant 18.3862′ between 14:52:15 and 14:54:15).
Here is a summary of contributions to date, converted to UT and DM.m format. I have added python / Skyfield's values too. Obviously Astron cannot compete with the 'big boys', but is still well within observable limits.
UT | Geocentric Separation | |
Antoine | 14:53:21 | 0° 18.4′ |
SOLEX | 14:53:09 | 0° 18.3870′ |
Roger | 14:53:09 | 0° 18.388′ |
Frank | 14:53:10 | 0° 18.38862′ |
Antoine 2 | 14:53:10 | 0° 18.392′ |
IMCCE | 14:53:09 | 0° 18.3867′ |
Paul | 14:53:09 | 0° 18.3870′ |
Astron | 14:53:15 | 0° 18.3862′ |
Skyfield | 14:53:08.5 | 0° 18.38721259′ |
I included the arc facility to possibly help with sextant calibration, listing the sextant arc between stars, or between selected limbs of nearer bodies. The geocentric option was added later.
Bill