NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2012 Dec 30, 19:57 -0500
Hi Geoffrey
Here is my entry. I wanted to think this through before I just said something.
I will take only one photo.
The camera will be aligned prior to the photo onto a precise east west latitude line.
Next, the photo will be taken on an equinox. Why? Because it simplifies the date issue. It will be easy to remember the day the photo was taken without silly tricks like a newspaper or dated watch complication in the photo.
The image in the photo will include the horizon, the sun and the moon. The sun will be close to the horizon. Remember that precise E/W camera orientation? The latitude will be revealed by the 'off center' image of the sun. When facing E/W, the declination of the sun of an equinox is zero and the latitude may be directly derived by the off centered-ness of the sun.
The local apparent time can be determined by the altitude of the sun above the horizon, which will be of some refinement when we measure the lunar distance between the sun and moon, also in the image.
So from this one photo, I have (1) Latitude via off-centered sun on an equinox, camera precisely E/W (2) Date via an equinox and memory (3) Longitude via lunar distance and (4) Local Apparent Time via an amplitude of the sun.
I believe they call this a time sight and was good to within a few nm.
So Dr. Kolbe, that'd be my entry. Now I look forward to yours! Will you wrap your problem up?
Kind Regards
Brad
Suppose you wish to covertly record the location of a stash of gold buried in the Sahara desert (say). Could you take a casual looking photo which would convey enough information to make a fix within a few nm of where the photo was taken?
Thanks
Geoffrey