NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Polaris in daytime
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2012 Jan 25, 14:31 +0000
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2012 Jan 25, 14:31 +0000
Surveyors often need to find true North to lay out the initial reference line off which a building is measured. These days, with GPS gizmos, there is no difficulty in this. But pre-GPS, true North was found by taking a timed azimuth measurement of the sun, or of Polaris which, the text books say, is visible during the day using the average theodolite 30x scope. When I was in Egypt a few years ago doing an experiment on pyramid alignment, I tried to find Polaris using my theodolite. I had taken azimuth measurements off the sun, so I knew where to look, but I never saw nothing. Polaris is too high in these latitudes (Scotland) to see with a theodolite, so I am not able to try here. Has anyone in lower latitudes managed to see Polaris in the daytime through their sextant telescope, or through any other telescope? I was wondering how big a telescope you need to see Polaris in the daytime. Thanks Geoffrey Kolbe