NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Old Sextant on German money
From: Henry Halboth
Date: 2007 Mar 11, 00:02 -0500
From: Henry Halboth
Date: 2007 Mar 11, 00:02 -0500
A heliotrope is a device for reflecting the sun's rays to a distant point
to aid in long distance observations; a similar device for reflecting the moon's
rays is called a selenotrope - both are used or were used in geodetic surveying.
What the vize prefix means ion this context, I don't know.
Henry
----- Original Message -----From: FrankReedCT@aol.comTo: NavList@fer3.comSent: Friday, March 09, 2007 9:10 PMSubject: [NavList 2277] Re: Old Sextant on German moneyAlex E wrote:"This leaves open the question what sort of strange index mirror we see in this picture"I finally have a lead for you. It does indeed have a split index mirror. The instrument is a "vizeheliotrop". What is a vizeheliotrop? That I don't know :-). There are some German web sites that describe it, but my German is not up to the task. Here are a couple of photos I found of the original instrument. This modified sextant may have been a precursor to the heliotrope which Gauss invented during his survey of the Kingdom of Hanover.-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
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