NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Applications of Complex Analysis to Celestial Navigation
From: Robin Stuart
Date: 2009 Dec 8, 17:02 -0800
From: Robin Stuart
Date: 2009 Dec 8, 17:02 -0800
Andres, 1. Glad to see we have complete agreement. 2. Thanks for doing me the honour of including the method in CelestialFix.exe. I assume that you are using the code given in http://www.fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx?i=110248&y=200910 and would comment that, if you haven't done it already, you might want to include a test for the case when the CoP's do not intersect. As noted in the paper there are no intersections when the argument of the square-root in nu, eq.(3.2), is negative. As you see the method works for both simultaneous sights and for running fixes. 3. The complete version of Merrifield, including page 241, is available at google books http://books.google.com/books?id=3F1hEm8jlh0C and is referenced in my paper. You are right about the formula that is used to correct for the run. In the spirit of the methods in the paper, the exact correction based on spherical rather than plane trigonometry can be obtained using using eq.(5.1) (or eq.(A.4)). In eq.(5.1) and Fig.2, if the arc 0-z1 represents the uncorrected zenithal distance (ZD) and 0-z2 represents the distance and direction run, then d is the corrected ZD. Regards, Robin Stuart -- NavList message boards: www.fer3.com/arc Or post by email to: NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList+@fer3.com