NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Chris Mitchell
Date: 2019 Sep 25, 16:41 -0700
Good Day All,
This is my first post to the website. I have been browsing the site for the past few days and I am impressed with the amount of quality information and knowledge available here. I was intrigued by Frank's post, “time sight primer” from 24-December-2012 and decided to try to work out my longitude and time from a sight that was taken while at sea a few weeks ago. The below information is from a time sight taken at sea on September 3rd, using the Star Pilot software for sight reduction giving an intercept of 0.0', so I thought it would be a good example to try:
Date: 03-Sept-2019
GPS: 46 46.7' N 048 02.7' W
Time: 20:30:30 UTC
I.E: 1.0' off arc
H.E: 21.8m
Sextant Alt of Sun LL: 12 19.7'
Declination: N 7 25.2'
True Altitude of Sun LL: 12 24.3'
Latitude: 46 46.7' secant 0.16442
Polar distance: 82 34.8' co-secent 0.00365
Sum: 141 45.8'
1/2 Sum: 70 52.9' cosine 9.51524
Latitude: 12 24.3'
Remainder: 58.28.6' sine 9.93066
Ht: 9.80698
Sine related to Ht: 5:19:02 PM
UTC: 8:30:30
Difference: 3:11:28
Longitude: 47 52.0' W
With an intercept of 0.0' from the sight reduction I thought that by following the examples in an early 1800's version of Bowditch would have resulted in a longitude closer to the GPS position. Since this is my first attempt at this calculation, no doubt I have probably made an error somewhere along the way. Perhaps someone would be so kind to give me some guidance. I look forward to your replies.
Chris