NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Norm Goldblatt
Date: 2015 Sep 5, 12:29 -0700
Through the month of July, I took nightly readings of the separation between Jupiter and Venus using my Traughton and Simms sextant. I attach the results. Frank, alas I didn't include refraction. My rationale was that they were very close together and about the same altitude. Also, I was often late by about 1/2 hour (after 9PM, which I used to generate ephemerides. But, the rate of change was pretty slow- about a minute per hour. Also, any attempt to account for the finite sizes of the planets was doomed to failure as I couldn't resolve the discs.
I gained tremendous familiarity with my instrument. Looking forward to taking some real shots and becoming familiar with sight reduction. Thanks again Frank for suggesting the exercise.
Norm
