NavList:

   

Reply

Dear Fred,
Thanks for your encouraging message.

> Your findings also dovetail with Jan
> Kalivoda's report of the findings of a German who investigated
> precision of lunars at sea in the late 1800s.

Can this be found? Was this on the old list or on a new one?

> standard deviation of lunar distance reported by Jan was about 25
> arcseconds.

That is 0'.4. I am very interested, how exactly this was studied.

> I am wondering how much practice you estimate it took you to achieve
> this level of proficiency?

Probably several thousands individual shots (star-to-star and Lunar
distances). 4 standard student notebooks of records.
And a lot of thinking about the reasons of errors.
I am constantly doing this for about 3 years, since I bought my
SNO-T. I mean almost every evening with clear sky...
well perhaps 1/2 of all evenings with clear sky:-)

I reported my results from time to time, good and bad.
From the very beginning I had occasionaly very good results,
but some were bad.
And this was unpredictable. Gradually the proportion of good results
increased... by 2007 it increased to a reasonable level:-)

Right now I looked into the records of a year ago.
About 1/2 of all shots were within 0'.3 limit
and another half 0'.4-1'. Some had even more than 1',
but these were not frequent.
I used to blame my sextant...

Now it is much better. And I think that the sextant is very good
after all.

Alex.


--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com
To , send email to NavList-@fer3.com
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

   

Reply