NavList:

Avoid.

Look, there's nothing especially difficult about producing geocentric lunar distance tables like the ones that were published with such effort in the almanacs two centuries ago. All you do is take the GHA and Dec of the Moon (getting the equivalent of these two quantities was roughly 98% of the work two centuries ago) and the GHA and Dec of some other body, and since GHA and Dec are the longitude and latitude respectively where those two objects are at the zenith, you simply work up the standard great circle distance between them. And that's it. Done.

There are a wide variety of sources that do this right, and then there are some sources that just bumble around. My tables of geocentric lunar distances have been available online, for free,
    for decades,
and they are founded on the highest quality data. You can find my tables via the menus right here on the NavList website (look under "Data") or via my website ReedNavigation.com (look under the "Apps & Tools" menu) or here's a direct link: https://clockwk.com/apps/predict/. My tables offer a variety of options for customization. Try them and see. For example, you can select 1hr, 2hr, or 3hr (historical) distance tables. You can also select only distances that are in sextant range or only distances that are actually observable from your preferred location. The astronomical data underlying those tables originates from the numerical integrations generated by NASA/JPL. This is the same highly accurate data that is used to navigate spacecraft around the Solar System, and it is the same data that underlies the major official almanacs including the (real) Nautical Almanac and the Astronomical Almanac.

This needs to be said often, as it turns out: "The Nautical Almanac dot com" website has no connection to "The Nautical Almanac", the official publication. The URL (the web address) is clever marketing, bordering on a misleading trick. It's certainly true that much of their data is good anyway --because it's not hard to duplicate. But how do you know that? It's quite possible that --some day, maybe even some day soon-- the official "paper" Nautical Almanac will finally be superseded by various commercial equivalents, including this "thenaut..." website. But we're not there yet... not even close.

The lunar distance tables from the folks at TheNauticalAlmanac[dot]com have been around for a couple of years, and, although the great circle distance computation is inconsequential and hard to screw up, the tables are based on unknown almanac data. The "developers" there like to proclaim that they use a "Python library" created by... "some Norwegian guy who is now dead", and gullible navigators say to themselves, "wow, I heard of Python, I think... that's super-duper sophisticated code! And wow, a dead Norwegian!" and that's a sad thing (I am exaggerating for satire, but it's not far from that). The very fact that the developers speak with such pride of the code base they are using is rock-solid proof that they are "mere" coders, with no real clue about the astronomy.

In addition to the tables, there are sections in the introduction to those lunar distance tables at TheNauticalAlmanac[dot]com which are founded on a poor and grossly superficial understanding of the history and actual practice of lunars.

You also mentioned Bruce Stark's tables for working lunars. The section that explains how to calculate the geocentric lunar distances, like the tables we're discussing, is, as you say, not really necessary [there is such a section, right? I haven't looked at the Stark tables in maybe twenty years]. And that section wasn't necessary even thirty years ago when Bruce Stark was creating his tables. But he was a "man on a mission". He almost single-handedly rekindled interest in lunars in that era, and his self-published tables are clever and creative ...but to a fault, arguably. They bear no connection to any historical method of working lunars, and they employ mathematical methods that are at best "idiosyncratic", and they were constructed as if handheld calculation devices (calculators, phones, etc.) do not exist. Why use paper calculations to generate geocentric lunar distance tables?? Historical navigators in the period when "lunars" were widely used did not calculate the distances on paper. They had pre-computed almanac tables. As a modern navigator, you can quite easily compute your own (but at slightly lower accuracy than the tables on my website, for example, as described above). How? It's just the standard great circle distance:
  cos LD = sin Dec_m sin Dec_s + cos Dec_m cos Dec_s cos(GHA_m - GHA_s).
You can punch that up on a calculator in under a minute. The equation should be self-explanatory, right?

Beyond the lunar distance tables (which, again, are relatively trivial for modern calculation), a lunarian has to "clear" the lunar distance, removing the effects of semi-diameter, refraction, and especially the Moon's parallax. The process of "clearing" the lunar distance is comparable to the process of applying altitude corrections in common celestial navigation but with more work. Clearing lunar distances, which is the major share of the process of working a lunar, is an interesting historical issue and an interesting math puzzle for the modern lunarian. This is a topic endlessly mangled by modern hobbyists and hyper-nerds. What a shame there's no way to learn about the reality of lunars in history and modern practice. Oh, but there is...

Attend one of my workshops on lunars. As it happens, I am busy prepping this morning for my online workshop, Lunars: Longitude by Lunar Distances. That's happening this weekend, starting in just about 49.5 hours, as I type this (so says the countdown clock on the meeting link!). This Spring it is available at a significantly reduced price, and there's still time to sign up. Go here to read about it: https://reednavigation.com/lunars-class/. If you can't make it this weekend, I run this regularly, two or three times annually (*). And for those of you around the Pacific for whom the current workshop might be at inconvenient hours, I will be running this workshop in a "Pacific" session (meaning we would start at/near 00h UT) in early August. If you're interested in that, please let me know. It's not set in stone yet.

Frank Reed

* Have you already attended my lunars workshop? Want to repeat? I haven't been replaced by an A.I. instructor, so there's always a little something new or different in every session. If you attend any of my celestial navigation classes, either in-person or online, you can repeat the same workshop (online) for a modest "seat fee" (just to make sure your reservation means something to you). Interested in repeating? Go here: RNav repeat rate.