NavList:

Since this list has not apparently made it into a NavList message, I thought it might be worth listing the navigational stars which were hard-wired into the Apollo Guidance Computer of the Apollo spacecraft back in the 1960s/70s. There were 37 Apollo stars including many of the common stars from the list of "57 navigational stars" (a list which was only complete in its modern form less than a decade before this list was assembled). The numbers are the octal (base 8) numbers that the astronauts entered into the computer so they appear to go up to "45" and there are none ending in 8 or 9. If the astronauts decided to use a planet, they entered star number "0" and then entered data from a table of "unit vectors" which gave planetary ephemerides equivalent to normal celestial coordinates for ever few days of the particular flight they were on.

All of the star names will be familiar except maybe Navi, Regor, and Dnoces. If those don't ring a bell, just Google them for the story. There's also "Dabih" which is Beta Capricorni. Though that's not on the modern list of navigational stars, it was briefly the "tenth lunars star" for a few years back in the 18th century.

Number,Star name
0,Planet
1,Alpheratz
2,Diphda
3,Navi
4,Achernar
5,Polaris
6,Acamar
7,Menkar
10,Mirfak
11,Aldebaran
12,Rigel
13,Capella
14,Canopus
15,Sirius
16,Procyon
17,Regor
20,Dnoces
21,Alphard
22,Regulus
23,Denebola
24,Gienah
25,Acrux
26,Spica
27,Alkaid
30,Menkent
31,Arcturus
32,Alphecca
33,Antares
34,Atria
35,Rasalhague
36,Vega
37,Nunki
40,Altair
41,Dabih
42,Peacock
43,Deneb
44,Enif
45,Fomalhaut
46,Sun
47,Earth
50,Moon

-FER

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