NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Star finding techniques
From: Stan K
Date: 2016 Apr 21, 15:17 -0400
From: Stan K
Date: 2016 Apr 21, 15:17 -0400
Bill,
There are plenty of star finding programs available for all platforms, but there is one Android program whose reason for being is for learning the navigational stars. It is called Sextant Stars. The free version only does 20 of the stars, but the premium version ($1.99?) does the 57 plus Polaris.
Stan
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Lionheart <NoReply_Lionheart@fer3.com>
To: slk1000 <slk1000@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Apr 21, 2016 1:34 pm
Subject: [NavList] Star finding techniques
From: Bill Lionheart <NoReply_Lionheart@fer3.com>
To: slk1000 <slk1000@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Apr 21, 2016 1:34 pm
Subject: [NavList] Star finding techniques
Thanks Frank your brain gym idea made me think. Being in my 50s I try the exercise my brain with new tasks like trying to get good enough at morse to have a descent CW conversation. More relevant to NavList, I am having a go at learning to recognise the navigational stars. When I first did the RYA YM ocean course in the 1980s I had a wonderful teacher who would look up and see a star peep briefly from clouds of the Oxfordshire sky and say " that is Aldebran " without any other reference points. How do I aquire that skill? Of course she learnt it from continuous practice on ocean passages. Any tips from the experts? I have yet to do any really long passages and the sky is rarely clear where I live in Derbyshire.
Bill
