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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Ancient Lunar Longitudes?
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2009 May 14, 10:27 -0600
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2009 May 14, 10:27 -0600
On 14 May 2009 at 9:04, frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.com wrote: > And yet even without a > proper model of the Moon's motion, if we simply have an observatory > --well-funded, well-staffed-- recording the Moon's position every hour of > every day (while it's above the horizon naturally) then we can compare > our position information with similar position information gathered at > distant locations. And in that case, they could have probably counted on > accuracies of about six to ten minutes of arc in the net comparison, > which corresponds to 3 to 5 degrees error in longitude, and that wouldn't > be entirely useless. Just to finish this thought, "that wouldn't be entirely useless for future civilizations who could predict the moon's position accurately enough to make use of these detailed maps". Chicken, egg, all the King's horses, etc., etc. ... you know the story. ;-) Ken Muldrew. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---