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    Navigation articles on Wikipedia
    From: Frank Reed
    Date: 2019 Aug 27, 09:17 -0700

    There are many examples of poor or misleading information regarding celestial navigation on Wikipedia. Maybe if we start listing some examples, those of you who enjoy editing Wikipedia can improve the situation. I consider this a fairly hopeless task for a number of reasons, but what the hell. 

    In the Wikipedia article on lunar distance navigation, which has many problems, there's one amusing bit of daft wiki-shit. The article says that the other body used for a lunar observation "could be the Sun or one of a selected group of bright stars lying close to the Moon's path, near the ecliptic; Regulus was particularly commonly used."

    Regulus?! How on Earth could anyone believe that Regulus was commonly used (let alone particularly commonly, whatever that means)? Yes, it was one of the nine lunars stars, but there is nothing about that star that made it unusually popular in any way compared to the other bright stars near the ecliptic. Indeed, in the many historical lunars that I have analyzed, I have never once seen a Regulus lunar. By far, the most popular "other body" was the Sun. Again, this is just one on a long list...

    So let's add to the list of errors and misleading entries, not just in this lunar distance article but also in other navigation articles, at least to serve as a reference for Wikipedia's low quality on this topic in the year 2019. At best a list will serve as a guidebook for Wikipedia editors who have the energy to clean things up.

    Frank Reed

       
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