NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Captain Cook's Sep 07th, 1773 Lunar revisited
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2012 Jul 20, 11:57 -0400
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2012 Jul 20, 11:57 -0400
Kermit, > At that same time, the Sun Azimuth was 080°0 ans its Lower Limb Height > was 12°12'3, still a quarter of a degree off its quoted value of 12°38'4 > . However we do achieve narrowing our Sun "initial error" by 2/3. Would > that be sufficient, given the fact that the Sun horizon was > land/hill-blocked ? You say that the horizon under Sun was land-blocked? This you determined from the azimuth and the map? This does not explain why their altitude is bigger than real... (It would be smaller if they measured it from the land horizon. Could they possibly use the shore edge instead of the horizon?? Then one can expect a bigger result.) > Almost one arc minute in the Sextant Distance as a result of 10 > observations, ... by Cook ??? Most likely not Cook himself but his astronomers:-) I agree that 1 minute error in the average of 10 is too bad for Cook astronomers... But if you say that Sun horizon was blocked... then we probably will never know the truth:-( Because we don't know how exactly they treated this obstacle. Alex.
