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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Latitude from date and length of daylight?
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2005 Feb 13, 15:45 -0500
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2005 Feb 13, 15:45 -0500
I was in warmer climes recently and noticed "again" that traveling north/south, there's a big change in the amount of daylight at this time of year. And for some reason I thought, this should be a way that one can determine their latitude, no? If one times the length of the day at any given location (using whichever version of "sunrise" and sunset you prefer), and one knows the date relative to the equinox or solstice day, one should be able to calculate the latitude one is at, no? It seemed interesting, that with just a watch and calendar one should be able to get latitude this way. Since most modern watches run to better than a second a day, this would seem to be a reasonable navigation tool. Has anyone seen a formula for this, or does anyone want to give it a try?