NavList:

At the top of every page at NavList.net, you will find this description:
NavList: A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding.

There have been two further contributions on the "Mercury Lunars" thread in the past two days. I have not posted those messages. That thread is done. In one message, one participant wrote: "We are no longer dealing exclusively with actual Celestial Navigation, but we are dealing in Software development and maintenance here." In another message another participant wrote: "I have compared ... results with yours and those calculated by other contributors. These are only comparisons of the results of independently written programs with the same input data."

Development of software projects and comparisons of software output at the level of a hundredth of a minute of arc are not components of the "preservation and practice of celestial navigation". 

Apps and other "software products" are essential components of modern celestial navigation, and developers have always been free to announce and describe their creations in NavList messages. Occasional sidebar topics on aspects of software projects are fair game, too, so long as they are treated as incidental topics.

Unfortunately, some of this community's fans of navigation coding have reached a state where they seem to be only interested in negligible, arcane refinements in mathematics which they perceive as "sophisticated". And if those refinements can be wrapped in impenetrable jargon —so much the better, right? This behavior is a property of an exclusive society, a private club. I do not intend to help the NavList community become a private club in this manner.

And there's a real shame here. In the process of cooking up these discussions to the benefit of an exclusive club, you ignore contributions that are "beneath you". I call your attention [all NavList members] to a post on 22 Dec 2025 Ephemerides and Sight Reduction on an HP Prime Calculator. This was a first post from a new NavList member... and it received no replies. None. It was right in the lane of interest of the calculating community, yet you all ignored the post, and you ignored the new member. That's awful. That is just plain awful. But maybe his project wasn't sophisticated enough for you.

Navel-gazing on negligibly small corrections with over-done precision is neither advancing the future of navigation nor is it illuminating or exploring the history of celestial navigation. Comparison of app outputs is not navigation. I will admit that what we're seeing here is historical in one sense. It is a continuation of the late 19th century transition of lunars from a straight-forward and relatively easy navigation tool from decades earlier into an object of mathematical play —an obsession for retired would-be mathematicians, engaging in intellectual cosplay... "Am I Nevil Maskelyne yet?? Am I just like Nathaniel Bowditch now??" That sort of history is not worth repeating.

What's really unfortunate, from my point of view, is that I have to explain this every couple of years. It's the same story, over and over again. Are memories so poor?

Of course, it's also possible that this is just one stream of the meltdown of celestial navigation. The decline is accelerating, and there are multiple streams running down the hillside. Perhaps distilling celestial navigation into otherworldly math spirits is inevitable. But not here, and not now. Navlist is a community devoted to the preservation and practice of celestial navigation and other methods of traditional wayfinding.

Before the reductionism starts...
• Mathematics is essential to celestial navigation. Use it wisely, and let us know what you learn.
• Apps and "software" are normal in the modern world. Use them to advance the cause of traditional celestial navigation, not as an obsessive diversion from celestial navigation.
• Observe exotic things, even stars and planets at exceedingly low altitude, which have limited navigational significance. Talk about your observations, and assess their merit rationally.

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA