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George Huxtable wrote -
> If you put an angled slab of parallel glass, thick as you like, into the
incoming path of light
> before it strikes the index mirror, the only difference it will make is
that the bit of incoming
> sunlight sampled by the index mirror is displaced by a few millimetres.
But, as it's everywhere
> parallel, that sample of sunlight is just the same, travelling in exactly
the same direction, as
> before. The sextant won't notice any difference whatsoever.

Oh yes, good point.  The sun is not a laser pointer and Earth's orbit won't
fit
in my closet.  Got it.

I was thinking about viewing spots on the wall instead of viewing the sun
through a telescope.  The nice thing about a laser is that it is a source
of collimated light.  But even given a bright enough laser, it could be
a bit tricky aligning everything within tolerance, using only what's already

in the garage.  I have not done the math to compare the size of errors to be

expected from misalignment of the test bed to the size of the errors George
is looking for.

Renee

   

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