NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Celestrial Navigation
From: Vic Fraenckel
Date: 2002 Jun 30, 18:26 -0400
From: Vic Fraenckel
Date: 2002 Jun 30, 18:26 -0400
I joined this Mail List back in March. I have not received any mail from the
list in the past month or two. Is anyone out there any more?
I have wanted to do tableless celestrial navigation on my computer for quite
some time and have been searching for a way to do this. My trusty Google
engine finally hauled me to Paul J. Heafner's "Funamental Ephemeris
Computations" and the "JPL Planetary and Lunar Ephemerides" CDROM. I have
been studying the book to try and get an understanding of what's going on in
there. In the past couple of months I have progressed about 1/3 of the way
thru the book and have tried out many of the routines found there. Now that
I have invested a goodly amount of time in this project I have come to the
point of wondering if I am barking up the wrong tree. The focus of the book
is Astronomy. As I am coming into this as a beginner as far as the Astronomy
is concerned, I would like to know or understand that this research is going
to provide me with what my goal is - tableless celestrial navigation.
Programming is NO mystery to me as a retired Software Engineer. I am
assuming that given the understanding of extracting data from the JPL
Ephemerides and massaging it with software will yield me the figures that
are equilvalent to those that we all can find in the Nautical Almanac and
that I will end up with the proper algorithms to go from sextant to a
position that is reliable.
ANY enlightenment would be greatly appreciated.
TIA
Vic
________________________________________________________
Victor Fraenckel - The Windman vfraenc1@nycap.rr.com
KC2GUI www.windsway.com
Home of the WindReader Electronic Theodolite
Read the WIND
"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long
and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival."
- Winston [Leonard Spencer] Churchill (1874 - 1965)
Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?
-Count Oxenstierna (ca 1620)
