NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: CN on Mars
From: Stan K
Date: 2016 Feb 6, 18:00 -0500
From: Stan K
Date: 2016 Feb 6, 18:00 -0500
Wouldn't it still be 30 Martian nautical miles?
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert VanderPol II <NoReply_RobertVanderPolII@fer3.com>
To: slk1000 <slk1000@aol.com>
Sent: Sat, Feb 6, 2016 12:40 pm
Subject: [NavList] Re: CN on Mars
From: Robert VanderPol II <NoReply_RobertVanderPolII@fer3.com>
To: slk1000 <slk1000@aol.com>
Sent: Sat, Feb 6, 2016 12:40 pm
Subject: [NavList] Re: CN on Mars
The New York Times best selling novel THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir has the main character Mark Watney making a sextant to determine latitude by Deneb and timing Phobos to determine longitude (page 288). Is the star Deneb a good choice for a pole star? His Mars made sextant should be good to half a degree where 30' would be better than 30 nautical mile precision.Greg Rudzinski
Actually 0.5° angular measurement would result in about 16nm accuracy due to the smaller diameter of Mars.
