(Stark4677@XXX.XXX)
Date: Fri Feb 16 2001 - 17:11:46 EST
Russell—I could pose your question in a letter to the Nav. Foundation, but
turnaround would be slow. The Newsletter comes out only four times a year.
As for me, I don't think I can improve on what's already been said by Steven
Wepster and others. Perhaps part of the difficulty is that you're mixing
local apparent noon into this. Admittedly you're close to LAN in both time
and space. But forget about that. What matters is the local hour angle of the
sun—the TIME from LAN. The latitude you get is for the place of observation.
The advantage of ex-meridians is they require no plotting. They're at their
best when the difference between latitude and declination are considerable.
Otherwise azimuth changes so fast near meridian passage that a small error in
local hour angle causes a substantial error in latitude.
Unfortunately that's about the best I can do.
Bruce
