NavList:

David Pike, you wrote:
"However, neither of these trajectories swing easily into place on Navigator animation feature.  Neither do they tie in with LA or Moab, so it looks like it’s back to the drawing board."

Yeah, it's an interesting puzzle, isn't it? Two centuries ago mathematicians and mathematically-inclined navigators couldn't get enough of this. By the mid-20th century, it was subsumed under the general problem of a two-body fix with arbitrary longitude. Just draw the two LOPs from the altitudes and see where they cross for latitude. And that's that!

And yet... and still... :)

Wouldn't it be nice to understand how to resolve this by other means? This particular case, from the original image, has some interesting properties (do they help simplify the math?). The angular separation is small. One of the stars is quite close to the celestial equator. And we're only interested in a latitude to the nearest whole degree at best ...since we can only estimate the altitude of the stars rather roughly. Surely, there's some clever way to do this, right?

For anyone late to the game, the puzzle at this point is as follows: suppose Alnilam is h degrees in altitude. Suppose also that Rigel is at the same altitude h or nearly the same. And h might be in the range of 20° to 30°. Solve for latitude by some method that does not involve jumping to a pair of crossing lines of position. The latter is certainly a guaranteed solution. The question is whether we can do something with some spherical triangles that would yield the approximate latitude more directly.

You can assume that the Declinations and SHAs or GHAs of the stars are what you would find in a recent year almanac (let's say 2018) or equivalent. In case anyone else wants to give it a try:
  Alnilam: SHA = 275°43', Dec = S 1°12',
  Rigel: SHA = 281°09, Dec = S 8° 11'.

A variant to consider would be a case where the two stars have corrected altitudes equal to 0°. Is that easier?

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA

PS: David in an earlier message, you wrote: "I thought I’d better Google Delores and Bernard at the same time. Frank, you must have time on your hands watching films like that" ....this from the man who has a working toy steamboat?? ;-) Ha ha. I actually liked your steamboat, by the way! :) The rebooted series, Westworld, despite its origins in "schlock" (junk) in the 1970s, was actually quite thought-provoking... what is consciousness? what is the mind? Why is life worth living...? Does anyone have 'free will' or are we bound by our 'programming'? All that big-picture stuff. And on top of that, it had some fine acting, directing, production values, and old-fashioned thriller fun. Here's a review from its early days.