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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Old style lunar
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2004 Dec 10, 10:42 -0500
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2004 Dec 10, 10:42 -0500
This looks to me like a very realistic assessment of the method, maybe somewhat on the conservative side: On Fri, 10 Dec 2004, Frank Reed wrote: > Here's what Maskelyne has to say about the matter in the preface to the > Nautical Almanac that year: > "These new tables [...] seem to give always the Moon's longitude in the > Heavens correctly within 45 seconds of a degree; which greatest error, added to > the possible error of one minute in taking the Moon's distance from the Sun or > a star at sea, will at a medium produce an error of 50 minutes of longitude". If this is so, and if the seamen understood this, is seems unwise to correct ones DR position for a lunar when the difference is less than 2-3 degrees. Maybe this explains why there was no Lunar era, after all? Alex.
