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What is the best way to find an approximate bearing on a celestial body or
conversely, to find a celestial body using a bearing?  I've been doing it
lately by simply facing forward in the direction of the sun/planet/moon
after shooting a sextant sight and trying to be accurate using my trusty
Silva hiking compass with sighting mirror.  This has worked well in the past
for getting rough estimates which I use as a check on my calculated azimuth.
  But I just recently purchased a Starfinder 2102-D and find that I might
need a more accurate way to find a bearing in help locating the desired
star.  I'm thinking I'll just stand facing the general direction with the
sextant set for the proper altitude of the body (according to 2102-D) and
start scanning.  But then this just seems somewhat inaccurate and dicey to
me.  Do I need a handbearing compass?  It seems that any advantage of a
handbearing compass would be obviated by the fact that it must be tilted up
at an angle to get a truly accurate reading, and tilting compasses (in my
experience) causes the card to become dampened, thus no actual bearing can
be found.  How is this done by other navigators, short of purchasing an
astrocompass?
                                                      Todd Shanklin
                                                     Long Beach, CA



**********************
Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away.  I
think prime numbers are like life.  They are very logical, but you could
never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about
them.

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