NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2012 Sep 1, 06:16 -0700
On my opinion, there was NO way of finding longitude in 12-th century,
except by dead reconing or measuring distance on land.
Theoretically, one could time the eclipses, simultaneously
at two different places but there was really no way
to time them in 12-th century with sufficient precision.
The proof of this is that actually longitides of many places were found
incorrectly, until the invention of modern methods, like Jupiter
satellites.
It is also practically impossible to find longitude from stars only
(without a chronometer, Moon or Jupiter satellites). I remember Frank
proposed once using some varibale star with appropriate period, but
I strongly doubt that this could be used in 12-th century, or that
it was ever used by the US Navy.
So probably the sailor, who participated in the war in Pacific,
just forgot to mention that except the tables, chronometer should be used.
Alex.
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