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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Spherical triangles versus plane triangles
From: David Pike
Date: 2025 Sep 17, 14:24 -0700
From: David Pike
Date: 2025 Sep 17, 14:24 -0700
I thought I could knock this off in about five columns and 15 minutes, but either Excel was playing up or my memory was playing up. As you will see, I ended up proceeding in tiny stages and it took two hours to get it correct. Excel insisted in working in radians, but it refused to give out Pi, so I had to add it manually. Anyway, I got there in the end. My results are when the hypotenuse is 5.25 degrees, it’s 0.1 minutes too long. When the hypotenuse is 11.5 degrees, it’s 1 minute of arc too long. This seems way too amazing, so knock it down somebody. DaveP
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