NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: CelNav without sextant
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2004 Nov 2, 21:56 EST
Bill N wrote:
"As another way to use rising and setting of stars -- how about using the compass to identify the azimuth at which some circumpolar stars rise and set? I suspect that could tell you your latitude with reasonable accuracy, even without a watch. "
Stars are quite inivisible at the horizon. The atmospheric extinction erases everything except the Sun and the Moon (and even the Moon is invisible at the horizon except for a week or so around Full Moon) The idea of observing starrises and starsets is something that seems to have been re-invented on land over and over again. Even the illustrious Nathaniel Bowditch experimented with navigating this way on his very first ocean voyage in 1795. He soon discovered that the method is impossible in practice.
Frank R
[ ] Mystic, Connecticut
[X] Chicago, Illinois
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2004 Nov 2, 21:56 EST
"As another way to use rising and setting of stars -- how about using the compass to identify the azimuth at which some circumpolar stars rise and set? I suspect that could tell you your latitude with reasonable accuracy, even without a watch. "
Stars are quite inivisible at the horizon. The atmospheric extinction erases everything except the Sun and the Moon (and even the Moon is invisible at the horizon except for a week or so around Full Moon) The idea of observing starrises and starsets is something that seems to have been re-invented on land over and over again. Even the illustrious Nathaniel Bowditch experimented with navigating this way on his very first ocean voyage in 1795. He soon discovered that the method is impossible in practice.
Frank R
[ ] Mystic, Connecticut
[X] Chicago, Illinois
