Next message: Fred Hebard: "Re: Artificial Horizons and Mercury."
Just want to get a couple of more ideas before I leave.I also want to
explain what and why I did it.As for the 3 vs. 4 leveling bolts,maybe 3 are
better or at least easier to use to level the reflective surface.It takes
45-90 sec. to level my horizon and can be frustrateing to get it level.It
appears that with 3 bolts the leveling will be faster and just as good.The
spirit levels I bought are round,the size of a 25 cent coin and have a
circle inscribed or printed on the convex plastic lens a little smaller than
the size of a dime.They only cost $2.50 each,so they aren't very accurate or
I should say they can't give that fine of a reading.However,the little
system that was made at least proves to me that this is a viable alternative
to liquid levels.I leave it to you guys to hash out the finer details of
makeing it more accurate.Once this thing,and the glass one I made, is
leveled(relative)I can view all bodies untill they move so much as to need
to reposition the horizon.The Sun and Moon were observed.Last week I
observed the daytime Moon with the glass horizon I
made.Spica,Arcturus,Deneb,Altair,Vega and Antares were observed.Last night I
observed Nunki(with the glass horizon and the MS- 733) untill the light from
the riseing Moon washed it out.The question is how accurately must it be
leveled?I started building a horizon because of frustrations useing a Davis
horizon in strong winds during backpacking trips.I use a Davis M-25 plastic
sextant on these trips and get an accuracy from the sextant as + - 0.2' at
the very best.I'm just pleased as punch getting a fix within 0.5 mile of the
gps pos. useing the above set-up.At home useing the above horizons and the
MS-733 sextant I get finer results but that is to be expected.My main goal
in this was to see if one can get good refections of stars or planets with a
glass or plexiglas horizon,be fairly easy to use and be light in wieght.At
least to me,these practical experiments prove it is all the above.
