NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Sine curve to approximate declination
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2004 May 19, 13:09 -0700
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2004 May 19, 13:09 -0700
Here is my shot at it. The sine function takes angles from 0 to 360 degrees. In comparing this with the sun's declination, we will take our zero point to be the spring / vernal equinox, say March 20th. The sine(0) is 0, which is what the sun's declination is on either equinox. Now, as the sun's declination grows from 0 to 23.44 degrees by the summer solstice (let's say June 20th), we have 92 days to stretch out the sine function. That happens to be very close to the 90 degrees we want to stretch over this interval of zero to 90 degrees. (If you want better accuracy, you could have 365.2422 days in a year / 360 degrees for the full 0 to 360 range.) So what date corresponds to the sine(10)? Well, 10 * 92/90 days after the starting point of March 20th, which would be about March 30th. Take the sine(10) which is .1736, multiply it by 23.44 (the maximum declination), and you would get a declination approximation of 4.07 degrees. The actual declination is about 3.82 degrees. I made a spreadsheet with 4 columns to get a look at this. Do this in your favorite spreadsheet: Column 1: angles every 5 degrees, from 0 to 360. Column 2: the sin of column one (remember to convert to degrees by multiplying column 1 cells by pi/180) Column 3: column 2 times 23.44 Column 4: first cell set to the date 20 Mar 2004, then each succeeding cell to be 5 * 365.2422/360 days later that the cell before it. It is common for the declination estimates to be off by up to half of a degree. I too often make up a table of sun declinations and put in it my sextant box, but I actually generate the table from the real declinations from a good sun almanac, and I do not use this sine approxmiation, but if you were lost without anything you could start with this and it would be better than nothing. Dan -----Original Message----- From: Navigation Mailing List [mailto:NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM]On Behalf Of William Allen Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 9:39 AM To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM Subject: Re: HMS Bounty Fred, Could you please give a little more explanation on using the sine curve to approximate declination? Maybe a short example? Thanks, Bill Allen Fred Hebard