NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Star-star distances for arc error
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2009 Jul 2, 20:44 -0700
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2009 Jul 2, 20:44 -0700
Douglas, you wrote: "It appear to me there is a strong underlying desire by some who wish to prove others 'wrong' - when someone tramples upon little feet challenging pet theories." Let's see... when you stormed off last week, you said we were all defending "sacred cows". This week, we all have "little feet" to be trampled upon and "pet theories". You're digging yourself a rather deep hole, Douglas. But in this group, you may just find that there are folks willing to give a helping hand and get you out of there... when you're good and ready. :-) And Douglas, you wrote: "What I do not wish to do, or intend to do however, is send one posting about a subject, and then debate it endlessly, going around in circles." Oh but Douglas, that is EXACTLY what you have been doing. You ignore almost everything that is written in reply to you and then repeat your own demonstrably false statements. Repetition does not make things true. And you wrote: "Finally, I wanted to comment on the Star distance argument by presenting real objective analysis instead of the anecdotal evidence I have been presented with here such as "I regularly can obtain accuracy to 0.1 of a minute of arc". Such statements are scientifically meaningless without rigorous experimental evidence and an assessment of the errors." Douglas, you're making an erroneous assumption here. Just because I haven't thrown lots of statistics at you, doesn't mean that I don't have them. I have shot over 350 lunar distance sights in the past ten years. I've taught seminars in lunar distance sights. I own a half-dozen sextants, and I have mountains of data. When I say that my sights in some context have a standard deviation of, e.g., 0.25 minutes of arc, do you think I just made that number up? Perhaps it would help you to know more about me. There's a little article that appeared in a physics magazine (published in the UK actually) that you might enjoy (just for general background). It's linked here: www.fer3.com/me. You might also want to review the events, topics, and speakers at the "Celestial Navigation Weekends" held at Mystic Seaport Museum, one of the world's premier maritime museums, in 2006 and 2008: www.fer3.com/Mystic2006 and www.fer3.com/Mystic2008. I personally organized these events and presented a few of the "papers" presented. [please note: others will speak for themselves; it's not my job. But be advised that there are plenty of very intelligent folks on NavList]. You wrote: "I have a report available which I have scanned from the 'Journal of Navigation' (Institute of Navigation) of the mid 1960s which has done this very thing, and in detail. It is called "The Attainment of Precision in Celestial Navigation" by Robert Gordon of Yale University. The content is of such importance to this whole argument ..." I will reply to that separately. It's "unfortunate" for you that you think this little article is so important. It is a mark of considerable naivete at best. You concluded: "It mentions specifically measuring star distances for checking sextants. I do not think you will like the conclusions." As I said above, I will reply to the details of the article separately, but I think I should reply to this specific statement in this post. Your statement here is a mis-representation of the article's content. The author describes his attempts to measure INDEX ERROR using stars. He describes his miserable results which he clearly cannot explain, and then from that experience he asserts (without evidence; without data; much as you have done) that star-star sights for arc error wouldn't work. He has ZERO data on the topic of using star-star distances for arc error. Did you understand that?? -FER http://www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---