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On the recent topic of measuring star-to-star distances:
The Russian book
"Precision of astronomical determinations of ships position",
says that
precision of star-to-star distances strongly
depends on the position
of your sextant.
(I discovered this myself, experimentally, and was
complaining on the "inconvenient" position on this list
last October:-)
If the upper
star is
on the right of the
lower star, the position is "good". In the opposite case it is
"bad". They say that the results of "special investigations"
show that the standard error in good position is
0.15' to 0.18' while in a bad position is is 0.3' to 0.4'.
BTW, they recommend at least 7 measurements of a distance
with star-to-star observations.

Hadley was obviously left-handed. Left handed people make a minority
(though I am not sure about England:-)
It is amazing that they imposed the sextant design convenient
for them on ALL people:-)
(I read of the unique right-handed sextant in the Bauer book,
but I've never heard of a sextant with TWO handles, which would
be the most natural choice. Many reflecting circles have two
handles, on both sides).

A

   

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