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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: More Regulus-Moon (Near) Lunar Fun
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2023 Apr 6, 19:31 -0600
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2023 Apr 6, 19:31 -0600
Map makers like David Thompson would always use calculated altitudes. They didn’t carry chronometers but did carry pocket watches, so they would take a time sight using a star (the sun if it was up) that was either rising in the East or setting in the West and then use that local time for their lunar calculation. As long as they weren’t moving East or West, and their watch could keep time for a couple of hours, this worked well (there’s no difference in the number of sights one has to take, but it’s a lot more convenient when working alone).
Ken Muldrew.
On Apr 6, 2023, at 6:00 PM, Greg Herdt <NoReply_GregHerdt@fer3.com> wrote:This result lead me to wonder how navigators or map makers (thinking of Thomson or Powell here) would have taken these shots if they were by themselves and did not have assistants simultaneously shooting the altitude of the star/sun and the moon?
