NavList:

Art: Great story :).

Could you post your data? You said you took a few --enough to graph them-- so could you post a list of those measured distances and the UT times of each? Also post your approximate location --within 0.1° of your actual latitude and longitude would be fine. Don't worry if you think the results are ugly. We all know you have described this as your first lunar. Nothing wrong with that!

There's something that I say quite regularly about lunars, and it bears repeating. It's like the old Vaudeville joke: a man runs up to a doctor with his arm twisted behind his head and says, "doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this!" and the doctor replies "Then don't do that!" [end scene]. With lunars, too, if it hurts, don't do that. If the arrangement of your sextant is unmanageable or uncomfortable for your chosen star given the position of the Moon, then ask yourself, "why are you hurting yourself?" :) Just wait a while. Maybe a few hours. Maybe a day. In the case you mention, if you had started in twilight, you would have had much better luck with the Moon. It's not so much that the Moon was too bright, but rather your eyes had become dark-adapted. The Moon, after all, is a deep dark grey comparable to a lightly-worn asphalt-paved road. When you see it in the sky and it looks dazzling-bright, it's because your eyes are enjoying the night, while that dark grey moon is in direct sun.

Regulus last night or the night before would usually be counted as a bad choice for lunars. You should avoid distances lower than 20°. This was a rule historically, and it's still a good idea today. But even so, if you found that Regulus was in an uncomfortable position, then pick another lunar star. On the same side of the Moon you had Pollux and Mars and Aldebaran nicely placed. Or on the opposite side you could have waited for Spica. It may have been too low when you sstarted, but after it climbed above 10° or 15°, it would have given you the advantage of viewing the star in the horizon glass and the Moon in the index mirror. Then your shades would not have been a problem. 

You say you then jumped into the Stark tables. I don't usually recommend them since they're ahistorical, and one doesn't learn much about "real" lunars from them. Historical options were largely unavailable 25 years ago, but now it's no real problem to use slick, efficient historical techniques (like Thompson's Tables, which are the primary method I teach and recommend in my Lunars classes).

If you're practicing celestial navigation in the 21st century, whether shooting standard star altitudes or something more exotic like lunars, you have the great advantage of separating the observation process from the paperwork of clearing sights. Go ahead and shoot some lunars. Then clear them using my web app (or some equivalent tool). You find out immediately how well you're doing, how well the sextant+observer system is performing! Then you can go back later and try different paper methods, like the Stark Tables or various others, and see how well the pencil+math+brain system performs. They're distinctly different tasks. :)

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA