NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Latitude by Spica
From: Steven Wepster
Date: 2004 Jan 13, 16:41 +0100
From: Steven Wepster
Date: 2004 Jan 13, 16:41 +0100
Frank, I've spent this afternoon with the logs, and I must say I enjoy this stuff that you put into the list. Too bad I can't spend all my time... I've checked the first twenty pages or so, and I am quite convinced that the times in the log are local. All the observations seem to make sense then, except on the 6th of May near Bird Island, when AM and PM might have been interchanged. Certainly they are in West longitude since March 12. On April 19, I suppose the times of the lunar distance and the Spica transit got mixed up. 8AM seems a favourable time for a lunar in the ship's position, except that the moon is very high (73d) and near transit, which has some implications that they might not have been aware of or did not bother about. Also, for that position (and date) Spica transits about 0940 UT or 2340 LT on the 18th, or 11:40 PM. If they record that as 1:49 AM on the 19th (give or take a few minutes), then we must still explain the difference of two hours. They can't keep their local time two hours ahead of what it should be, because that would put the lunar of that day at 6AM in the proper LT, which is before sunrise. Perhaps after some hours of working lunars somebody's mind was too number-numbed too get it all right... I agree with you that the lunar longitude should read 152:33.5 instead of 159:33.5. Steven.