NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Learn the stars, by phone
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2009 May 22, 20:09 -0700
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2009 May 22, 20:09 -0700
Actually, you can easily navigate with a Skyscout. After all, it does provide both a compass and a gps. That's a pretty good starting point. In fact, my early gps' were fairly basic, no talking or anything beyond basic maps. So sure, I could! The idea of a globe that you could zoom in and out on, with the Sumner lines (circles) drawn on the globe, the geocentric lat lon of the object shown, the zenith, the poles and other navigational lines just like Dutton would be an awesome application. Being able to turn the globe would be slick too. So pick out your navigational star and have the smart phone show you which one it is. Click on the app, and it draws your Sumner Circle. Pick another one, and you see where this is going... You don't actually even need to see the real star, the circles come from your geographic position. The fun of the app is that you can pick out the stars and then see 'real McCoy'. Terrific for snagging new users and wonderful for explaining how celestial works for the beginner/intermediate student. I even like the name Sumner's Circles :-) Now as to the variation. I would suggest a double table lookup where the latitude and longitude are the dependent variables, with the variation for that location being the independent variable. This is a trivial lookup application that can readily retrieve the expected magnetic variation quickly. So now when you azimuth sensor (compass) tells you that you are pointing ESE, we can add on the variation. You are correct, without some other reference, it cannot know that the variation is beyond expected. Speculation on my part, and guilty as charged! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---