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Re: Angular Distance Between Stars By Camera and Sextant
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2012 Sep 18, 08:39 -0400
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2012 Sep 18, 08:39 -0400
Hi Marcel
Now that I need to recalibrate the arc of my circle of reflection, I want to be very sure I understand your recommendation.
Firstly, the circle I possess has a published accuracy of 5 seconds of arc. I wish to confirm to this level.
What source of data would be adequate? Astronomical Almanac? Nautical Almanac? Other?
Best Regards
Brad Morris
On Sep 18, 2012 5:03 AM, "Marcel Tschudin" <marcel.e.tschudin@gmail.com> wrote:
In the mean time I had a look at possible reasons for the 0.3 moa difference between the calculated distance as resulting from Paul's calculation and the one resulting from the USNO data, noticing the following:
(1) There are some Hc and Zn values which are rounded different to 1/10 of a moa. This means that there are somewhere differences of +/-0.05 moa or +/-3 sec of arc. For navigational purpose this is negligible, but for spherical astronomy calculations it is a lot. Where could this difference have its origin?
(2) The refraction values provided in the USNO almanac are slightly larger than those Paul used. This seems to confirm that the refraction values in the USNO table relate to observed altitudes; those are the refractions to deduct from the sextant measurement to obtain the Hc value resulting from measurements. The refraction values in the USNO table can therefore not be used for calculating the observed star distance from the Hc values, they have to be calculated separately.
(3) Calculating the distance D between the local coordinates of e.g. Alioth and Alkaid using Paul's el and az values to 1/10th of moa results in D=627.6 moa. Using his el and az values to 1/100th of a moa results in D=627.2 moa. With the full accuracy program values Paul obtained D=627.3 moa.
This example suggests that - independent of the accuracy in measured pixels - the calibration accuracy cannot noticeably be improved by using the distance of two star positions with the local coordinates calculated to 1/10th of a moa (difference in this example is 0.3 moa compared to +/-0.5 moa accuracy from HS observations). Improving the present calibration accuracy would require at least accurate J2000 star positions and a program for converting them to local coordinates to at least 1/100th of a moa (like Paul shows in his output).
However, for those not fortunate to live close to the sea and looking for a mean to calibrate their camera to somewhere around +/- 0.5 moa, measuring star distances and comparing them with the USNO almanac data, corrected with Saemundsson's refraction, may be an option.
Marcel
P.S: Thank you, Paul, for the link.
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:49 AM, Paul Hirose <cfuhb-acdgw@earthlink.net> wrote:
I'm surprised you could read the message. In the copy of my own message received by email, the link to the file gives a "page not found" error message.
I did not try to download the attachment. Firefox shows the content of attached text files without downloading them.