NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: instances of the use of "horizon grazing" technique
From: John Huth
Date: 2009 Oct 23, 11:35 -0400
From: John Huth
Date: 2009 Oct 23, 11:35 -0400
I've read Karlsen's book. It's quite entertaining, and I was interested to see that he spent a fair amount of time testing out the use of calcite as a way of measuring the polarization state of the sky.
He does discuss at length both the concept of the Viking sun compass and the sun stone. As this list is quite familiar, these two items are controversial topics, as neither are fully accepted. My main disappointment with Leif's book is that he doesn't do a critical evaluation of these, although I was impressed with the lengths he went to evaluate the efficacy of Icelandic spar.
The issue for me is that, because he bought the sun stone, and sun compass concepts wholly, that it made me more skeptical of other techniques he discusses.
My question really goes to whether there is some documented proof of horizon grazing stars.
Another associated technique that survival books teach is latitude by length of day. Although it seems to be possible in practice, I'm unaware of people actually employing this, although I am aware of people using sunrise/sunset timing for navigation.
John H.
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He does discuss at length both the concept of the Viking sun compass and the sun stone. As this list is quite familiar, these two items are controversial topics, as neither are fully accepted. My main disappointment with Leif's book is that he doesn't do a critical evaluation of these, although I was impressed with the lengths he went to evaluate the efficacy of Icelandic spar.
The issue for me is that, because he bought the sun stone, and sun compass concepts wholly, that it made me more skeptical of other techniques he discusses.
My question really goes to whether there is some documented proof of horizon grazing stars.
Another associated technique that survival books teach is latitude by length of day. Although it seems to be possible in practice, I'm unaware of people actually employing this, although I am aware of people using sunrise/sunset timing for navigation.
John H.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
NavList message boards: www.fer3.com/arc
Or post by email to: NavList@fer3.com
To , email NavList+@fer3.com
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---