NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2020 Nov 13, 08:38 -0800
David, no Betelgeuse, but yes to Capella and Aldebaran!
Frank
Yes, everything was pointing at Elnath, but I ignored the obvious. I must be subliminally biased against it. At +1.8 magnitude, I couldn’t see how it could possibly show at twilight, but I was confusing Chile’s nice clean atmosphere with the heavily dirt and light polluted atmosphere around my address. Moreover, I’m not sure I’d ever heard of Elnath. I’m pretty certain I’ve never filled it in on a celestial form. That’s probably because it doesn’t appear in AP3270 Vol1 for the areas in which I did most of my flying.
Betelgeuse on the other hand is much more familiar. It’s +0.1 magnitude, a unique colour, easily recognised, and you can amuse young children by calling it Beetle Juice. I should have realised that Betelgeuse was way too high up at the apex of a triangle based on Aldebaran and Elnath. DaveP
