NavList:

Courtney, you wrote:

"I'm interested in possibly programming a calculator to handle some
navigation calculations to avoid carrying cumbersome tomes and am
consequently curious as to how astronomers come up with the declination
numbers, etc.."

 

There are parts of this that are relatively easy to calculate and parts that are relatively difficult.

 

"Relatively easy": refraction and other altitude corrections, sight reduction table equivalents, the equation of time, and the GHA/Dec of the Sun and stars at moderate accuracy (a few minutes of arc).

 

"Relatively difficult": ephemerides for the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars accurate to the nearest few tenths of a minute of arc or better. "Calculating" these things on a traditional programmable calculator can be a bit tricky since these generally have small amounts of RAM. On the other hand, if you're willing to consider a more modern device --a handheld computer, a palm device, you would probably have sufficient memory to simply store the almanac data directly. This is not difficult, and it would get you the same accuracy as in the published Nautical Almanac.

 

There are a thousand different ways you could go with this. Are you interested in the coding? Or are you mostly interested in the final tool (if so, there are many commercial options)? Do you want to start with a few of the easy items? Or go for the whole ball of wax?