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Dear Fred,
Thanks for your prompt reply to some of my questions.

1. Bowditch (the online version I have) says the same as
the authors of other sextant books I read; this does not
address my question. Same about Bruce Bauer (which I have).

2.
> Until you get an almanac,
> tAhe US Naval Observatory has a very nice
> site
> at  from which you can obtain

Great!! Thanks! If I knew this earlier, I would not
spend money on a 2004 Almanach.
(Next time I will be sailing will be definitely not earlier than next
summer. And until then I can use this wonderful web site
for my "balcony
navigation").

> The old inverting telescopes had one nice feature for
> observing lunars,
> which was a cross hair reticule.

When I said that my Soviet inverting scope is of poor quality
I did not specify the details (being afraid that my message
is too long anyway, and may be non-interesting for most
because of the abundance of detasils). One point about
this scope is that you
cannot focus simultaneously on the cross hair and a remote object.
And this is a constructive defect, not of this particular scope.

> My understanding is that observed lunar distances will be too
> large if
> the sextant is not properly oriented.

I don't understand this argument. I don't understand
how cross hair are going to help. It seems to me
that the usual "rocking" procedure will do the job.
But I have not tried the lunar distances yet.
I tried star distances (as described in Bruce Bauer for
testing a used sextant).
The distance Arcturus-Dubhe seems to indicate that my sextant
error is at most) 0.3'.

Alex

   

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