NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Silicon Sea
From: Robert Gainer
Date: 2006 May 21, 08:22 -0400
From: Robert Gainer
Date: 2006 May 21, 08:22 -0400
Going back to Meeus and his method, if a computer is doing the calculations then does it matter that the equation is awkward to us. The computer doesn?t care and as long as the algorithm is well designed then complexity is of little importance. I am just starting to use my palm pilot for reduction and it is convenient. I think my days of paper and pencil are nearing an end along with NavL. Robert Gainer > > From: Alexandre E Eremenko> Date: 2006/05/21 Sun AM 07:47:16 EDT > To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM > Subject: Re: Silicon Sea > > Robert, > The reason why I wanted to have an almanac > for "all past and future years" on my computer > was simple: then I could make a simple program > which will reduce all types of sights with minimal > input data. Like Frank's Lunar calculator. > > Currently I have a program for sight reduction which > requires input from a paper almanac or from a web-based > almanac. > > > Alex > > On Sun, 21 May 2006, Robert Gainer wrote: > > > > > For our purpose I think it would be better to make copies of the relevant pages from the Nautical Almanac. The end use is to provide a lookup table to solve workbook problems. So part of the learning experience it to find the data in the actual pages. Does Mystic keep old Almanacs? Who might have out of date books like this? > > Thanks, > > Robert Gainer > > > > > > > > From: Alexandre E Eremenko > > > Date: 2006/05/21 Sun AM 05:46:24 EDT > > > To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM > > > Subject: Re: Silicon Sea > > > > > > > As far as I know, everyone uses the algorithms described by Jean Meeus. I > > > > seem to remember that at least one list contributor calculates data as > > > > needed directly, for virtually any date in the past or future. > > > > > > I remember an old discussion on the Nav-L list on the best method > > > of generating an almanac. Using Meeus seems (to me) very hard and time > > > consuming > > > (his formulas contain many terms and one has to input a lot of > > > numerical coefficients). As I remember, Frank proposed a simpler > > > solution: downolading all ready data from some site on the web. > > > This was a large file. Frank never said however how his own almanac > > > works, whether it uses pre-computed data, or computes each time > > > by Meeus's or similar formulas. > > > > > > Alex. > > > > > >