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Its no good just complaining - if Wikipedia has a mistake and you know
about the subject you edit it... its just what you pay for the
privilege of using it! However it needs to be sourced. So maybe back
it up with citations of your favourite books on celestial navigation.
Beware though to avoid original research. Wikipedia is a tertiary
source so the right place for analysis of the painting rather than
simply stating well known facts about navigation is the literature on
art. I think the speculative part should probably be removed if it
cant be backed up by reliable sources?

Bill

On Tue, 9 Apr 2019 at 00:18, Doug MacPherson
 wrote:
>
> Interesting problem.
>
> Some things I noticed.
>
> 1.  from the article:  "noon sight" at local apparent noon, a standard 
during the days of celestial navigation.  Most other sights are made at dawn 
or twighlight.
>
> problem:   twighlight can be before sunrise (dawn) or after sunset.
>
> problem  Most other sights?  I believe that morning and afternoon "time 
sights" (or sunlines if they had swicthed to the "new navigation") would have 
been much more prevalent than stars or planets at twilight.
>
> 2. from the article "...in reality, both observers would have had their octants to their eyes...."
>
> Not necessarily.  The sun hovers up there at the top of its arc for awhile, 
and it would seem more natural that the two navigators would not have lowered 
their octants at the same time.  Your not marking a specific time when you 
find the sun's greatest altitude at noon.
>
> Doug MacPherson
>
> 38° 34' N  121° 29' W
>
> 

   

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