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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Artificial horizons
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2003 Jul 11, 15:35 +0100
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2003 Jul 11, 15:35 +0100
I tried floating a thin glass mirror on a bowl of Mercury. It had the advantage that surface tension effects kept the mirror away from the sides of the bowl, so the bowl need only be marginally larger than the mirror. Furthermore, the bowl could be covered and sealed with a lid of plain, flat glass. The sealed bowl with floating mirror could then be picked up and stowed in any orientation, which would make this arrangement portable It worked pretty well, but I had to be careful that there was no dirt on top of the mercury on or the mirror, or the mirror would not sit level. Geoffrey Kolbe. Dr Geoffrey Kolbe, author of "Long Term Almanac 2000-2050" for sun and selected stars, with concise sight reduction tables. Available online from www.pisces-press.com