NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Lunars Workshop
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2005 Oct 6, 18:49 EDT
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2005 Oct 6, 18:49 EDT
A special thanks to Stan for posting his comments on the Lunars Workshop which toook place on September 10. Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to it. And also big thanks to everyone who attended from this list! We had about twenty people altogether, but the real enthusiasts were the Navigation-L list members. Of his first lunar distance observation, Stan wrote: "My first sight was 0.1' off, which is considered good. " Good? It's great! And by the way, when I cleared it again later, the error on that sight turned out to be 0.0 so you were right on the money. This fits in well with my experience with lunars. If you have a good sextant (not superior, just "good") and a reasonably careful observer --even a beginner, lunars can easily be taken with an accuracy of 0.2-0.3 minutes typical error in the distance (and frequently less) corresponding to a longitude error of 6-9 minutes. But equally important, when the error turns out to be larger, as with the one problem sextant that day, lunars are an excellent means of testing the instrument. -FER 42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W. www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars