2020-06-14, 03:46 PM
(2020-06-13, 08:41 PM)seandepagnier Wrote: Great to see celestial navigation in action! I never managed to get a sextant better than a CD in a case with mirrors glued to it.. but I find celestial navigation very interesting regardless. Maybe some day a digital camera could take continuous sights, even through clouds with a UV camera.
Are those actual sights you took with a sextant? It's difficult to tell since the scale is hidden, but it seems incredible to get 5 sights to overlap like that.
Hi Sean,
The sights are taken with a german CLASSENS+PLATH sextant. All sights are taken of the sun, starting in the mornig 09:00 (light blue) and ending afternoon (ogrange). You see how the Azimut of the sun is moving clockwise over the time from about 140' to 210´.
In your plugin I had to change the option "Minutes Certainty" to 0.50 so the line did not become to thick.
Then I moved all the sights exept the last with your tab "DR shift" in the distance and direction I have being sailing since I have took every single sight. So that gives you what you see at the picture.
I have to admid that one was out of place so I deleted that sight ;-)
I also use to take moon and planets/stars, then you can take tham all at once .....
I carry the sight reduction tables and almanac so I also calculate them without calculator just with a pen and then do the drawings. Every season the first ones are hard. But after a cupple of them you become saver and faster .....
Nowadays it is more a hobby and keeping of tradition and it gives me an other view of the importance of tecnology or how much
we beleeve and depend on it an its exactitude. What do we realy need ..... but I become philosophic ... sorry
All this was while PYPILOT was steering.
Greetings and save sailing
Andreas