This will be an informal seminar about Celestial Navigation on boats. We will cover the theory and techniques needed to obtain a position fix from the sun. We will learn about spherical triangles, measuring the sun's altitude, position lines, azimuths, intercepts, using the almanac, plotting a fix, and using running fixes to determine a position.
We will do some exercises to try to understand the actual process of performing a sunsight and plotting it on a chart.
Tue Jan 23, Thu Jan 25, 1-4pm, 2-136
Not required, but recommended if you are really interested in figuring this stuff out.
The seminar will be based on material from Mary Blewitt's Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen. This is pretty much the classic book for learning Celestial navigation, and is very good. The revised edition is publised by International Marine. You can find this book on Amazon.com, etc. You may also find it in some bookstores.
We will use data from the Nautical Almanac.
I have typed up some notes on the material that I will talk about.
On the first day I will talk mostly about theory, getting up to the intercept and azimuth. On the second day I will talk about plotting the intercept and azimuth, using a sextant, using the almanac, and doing an example sight. I will try to arrange to do a noon sight on friday that people can come to and use the sextant at.
I found these ones on google.com...
More details to come...