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Re: Technique question
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 May 19, 22:56 -0400
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 May 19, 22:56 -0400
Doug, I wonder if it would help your "fuzzy moon" situation if you took two lunar distances. That is, if you have a full moon, one from the near side of the moon to the star. The second, from the far side of the moon to the star. Split the difference by two and add/subtract it to either reading in order to get an averaged "center" for the moon. If there is any question of "is this the real edge of the moon", that question should be eliminated by taking whatever looks like the real edge--from both sides--and allowing any false "bloom" of the image to be cancelled out this way. I confess that simply getting both the moon AND a star lined up together quickly became a fruitless exercise here, with too much background light in the sky and a sextant that quickly came to weigh at least a hundred pounds after it had been in my hand in the position for the first ten minutes.