NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Bill Lionheart
Date: 2025 May 3, 15:40 -0700
Last night I took off my glasses and looked up at the moon. Well moons as my eyes are vertically misaligned (strabismus) I could see that I could fit between two and three moons between the two I could see, so
1.5 to 2 degrees. But this is just an estimate.
So I was wondering how to do this more accurately. I thought I could use the analogous thing to lunar distance. If I could see a bright star or planet that aligned with the edge of one of the moons for example.
Any other ideas how to do it? The reason it works with the moon as it was a very simple image. With a complicated scene instead of seeing it double my brain switches off the image from one eye where the visual fields overlap. This is called selective central suppression. Perhaps if I could see two many stars that would happen.
My glasses are fitted with a prism, which is meant to slightly under correct. The idea being to "persuade" them to move the right way. Not sure if that actually works!
Bill Lionheart
