NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Testing sextant arc error
From: Francis Upchurch
Date: 2017 Jan 17, 22:26 -0800
From: Francis Upchurch
Date: 2017 Jan 17, 22:26 -0800
Hi David,
In the past I have used the table in Letcher page 83 which includes true distances between 45 pairs of stars.
However,it is epoch 1977 and I'm not sure how much it would need to be corrected for "proper motion" etc.for recent times.
Letcher says he chose stars for the table with small proper motions all under 0.2" per year, so max error 8" today ? You could try a couple and then check those against present NA numbers as you suggest.
It worked well when I tried it on my then new Astra 111b in 2004. Time flies! (Oh to be travelling near the speed of light!)
Best wishes
Francis