NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2022 Feb 12, 02:23 -0800
Frank
Re: the Moon’s horns, I remembered I also took photographs of the Moon on 4th Feb. I’ve included these below along with a tidied-up version of my photograph on 7th Feb. Apart from South (T), which I derived from Google Maps aerial photography, the other bearings are approximate, because the fence posts and the octagon roof are so close. I was hoping to find an easy way of providing an estimate of the reliability of the line pointing south on the observer’s horizon, but a week’s casual viewing, when available, has only shown it’s going to be harder than that.
My next idea is experimenting with intersecting sheets of card describing the Moons orbital plane round the Earth and the Earths orbital plane around the Sun on a particular date if any mathematician or computer graphics whiz wants to join in.
Also beginning to show on the 4th Feb photograph is the security light about 200M away installed when the industrial area changed hands a couple of years ago. It completely messes up serious observations to the south from home at night. Any similar work on south from Orion’s Sword will have to take place in the open countryside, and it’s a bit cold for that at the moment. DaveP