NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Sun squash- was Green Flash and Longitude
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2006 Jan 14, 22:24 -0500
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2006 Jan 14, 22:24 -0500
On Jan 14, 2006, at 9:58 PM, Ken Gebhart wrote: > Gentlemen, > > The comments on green flash and longitude reminded me of a project > I once undertook to establish longitude from estimating the percent > squash of the sun due to refraction after rising, or before > setting. It all started during a flight I was making in a single- > engine Cessna airplane from Honolulu to Wake Is. In 1973 we had no > navigation equipment except a radio direction finder which told > which way to go, but not when you would get there. Also it could > fail. Thus, I always used an aircraft sextant on such trips. > Around noon I actually crossed the subpoint of the sun. Sextant > read 90 deg. no matter which way I looked. This was handy since I > could immediately put a fix on my chart without using the 249 > tables. It otherwise took a long time to work out a sight while > flying with my knees, not having an autopilot. Later as the sun > was beginning to set (this was a 15 hour flight), and I was still a > few hundred miles out, I planned to grab a longitude by observing > the sunset. All was fine until it did set... on a cloud deck! So > without a real horizon I couldn?t use the sight. But I remembered > that the sun began to show a squash as it approached the clouds. > So I began to think about correlating the percent squash with the > actual altitude, so I could get around this cloud problem. And I > thought it may be of use to people on land too, who had no accurate > horizon. > > For the next several months I took hundreds of photos of the sun as > it was rising or setting, noting the time and known geographic > position. I projected each photo on the wall of a room, and > measured the height and width of the disk, thus getting the amount > of squash. Working backwards from the almanac refraction tables, I > was able to correlate the percent squash not with just Hs, but > directly with Ho. I even developed correction curves for > temperature and pressure (including altitude). As it turned out, > maximum squash ever observed was only about 17%. I tested this > method with my co-workers who while driving to work in the morning > would note the squash and the time. We would work the sight out, > and to our surprise, they were never more than 3 or 4 miles off. > For a long time after that, I would note sun squash while driving > cross country, and work the sight upon return, with the same > apparent accuracy. > > I had in mind to publish a book on celestial navigation anyway, and > the sun squash chapter could be ?the hook?, that is, some > information that had never been published before to give it > intrinsic value. There would be an insert with ellipses of 5, 10, > and 15 % printed on sun shade material, that could be held up to > compare with the actual sun. Trouble was, I could not produce such > ellipses of suitable quality for publication. I needed a PC with > a desktop publishing program which had not yet been invented. So, > the whole project languished in a file cabinet all these years. > Now the issue is moot except for the interest some list members may > have in knowing about it. > > Ken Great post Ken. I can imagine it would be a lot of fun, or something, to try to work out a sight by hand while steering with one's knees! How would you measure squash? The altitude of the two limbs and assuming the SD for the width or the semi-diameter both ways? I don't know how to do semi-diameter with an aircraft sextant (or anything else with an aircraft sextant!). Fred