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One remark more:

The method of lunar altitudes for finding the GMT seems ideal to me for the 
observation above an artificial horizon (ashore, of course). The problems 
with dip, with the blurred sea horizon, with the short period of twighlight 
would then disappear completely. With an artificial horizon one can wait 
through the whole night, until the Moon with a star (not very distant from 
the Moon, but their azimuths don't matter too much in this case) come to the 
prime vertical. Many occasions can arise through the month and one could 
expect better results than with lunar distances, isn't it? . This could be 
very important in early days, when the knowledge of the accurate longitude 
was an exception outside the Europe and USA (maybe Caribbean) and the method 
of combining local time and longitude to obtain the GMT was therefore 
unavailable in remote countries.

Had you anybody heard anything about such usage? I didn't.

Maybe somebody from the list, who is in possession of a sextant and an 
artificial horizon, can try this method? It cannot be too difficult, I guess 
(from the desktop).


Jan Kalivoda



----- Original Message -----
From: "George Huxtable" 
To: 
Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2003 10:19 PM
Subject: Re: Lunar altitudes

   

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