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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: A Lunars Game
From: Trevor Kenchington
Date: 2003 Dec 16, 19:00 +0000
From: Trevor Kenchington
Date: 2003 Dec 16, 19:00 +0000
Frank, You have placed your contestant on an island at about 37 South (from the declinations of his zenith stars), which is a bit of a special case: He can only be on Tristan Da Cunha, St.Paul, one of the small islands off the North Island of New Zealand or just perhaps the little one off Coronel, Chile. Even the roughest of estimates on longitude (to the nearest 90 degrees for all but Coronel/Tristan!) could resolve which of those four. I don't have the 2004 almanac so I can't attempt to estimate GMT of sunset and hence longitude but I doubt that the required precision would call for properly clearing the lunar. If you had put your contestant on a raft at sea, the challenge would have been a good deal more interesting! Trevor Kenchington You wrote: > Can you figure out where you are using nothing but a few pages from the > Almanac? How accurately? Take a look at my "lunars game" here: > www.clockwk.com/lungame.html and see if you can win. -- Trevor J. Kenchington PhD Gadus@iStar.ca Gadus Associates, Office(902) 889-9250 R.R.#1, Musquodoboit Harbour, Fax (902) 889-9251 Nova Scotia B0J 2L0, CANADA Home (902) 889-3555 Science Serving the Fisheries http://home.istar.ca/~gadus