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Subject: Re: New Use For Sextant
From: Robert Eno (enoid@XXX.XXX)
Date: Tue Jun 11 2002 - 23:46:08 EDT
Dan,
You are a man after my own thinking.
I am new to this forum so this is my first posting.
I have used my sextant to observe numerous solar eclipses. It is the best thing for this purpose. I have never tried to take a photo though. Next time around. You must have a steady hand.
Here's another use for a sextant: I used one of my aircraft bubble sextants several years ago to take a round of shots of comet Hale-Bopp. I got the emphermis data from the astronomy department of a Canadian university. Didn't do too badly at that. Took four shots and averaged them out. I was able to fix my position to within 2 nautical miles.
But if you really want a good excuse to use your sextant, I suggest that you take up lunars. They are a hoot, and you will get some serious sextant practice under your belt in the process. In 1999, a fellow by the name of Bruce Stark published a simplified set of tables for clearing the lunar distance. Mr. Stark spent over 20 years developing them. I in turn, spent a few months in mastering them by constantly practicing out on my deck, late into the evenings. Then came the sight reduction...
If you like sextants, you'll love lunars. I believe that these tables are available from Celestaire in Wichita, Kansas. I highly recommend them.
cheers,
Robert
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Allen
To: NAVIGATION-L@XXX.XXX
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 11:10 PM
Subject: New Use For Sextant
Last night we had a partial solar eclipse here in the Seattle Washington area. I wanted to look at the eclipse so I used my Tamaya Jupiter sextant with a 7X scope and a dark gray filter and a green filter. Worked great! I had all of my family look through the sextant to view the eclipse. I then had the idea to put my Kodak digital camera up to the sextant eyepiece and I took a couple of decent photos!
Any excuse to use my sextants... ;-)
Dan
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