Next message: Alexandre Eremenko: "Re: Alex's Low Altitude Lunar"
"P.S. Also I managed to take a good lunar this morning, just
before the moonset. The moon was 4d05.5' high, barely visible,
touching the trees! The Sun was 25d55' high.
The distance from the Sun to the Moon was 104 degrees.
I took the average of 3 observations and the resulting error
in the distance was 0.2' (with temperature and pressure
corrections, and using Frank's calculator)
ongitide was 6', and the error in long from the
the worst observation to 9'.
I mean the Moon alt was beyond any reasonable refraction formulas,
and the distance was pretty large. The weather was excellent though."
FYI, the refractional flattening that occurs below 10 or 12 degrees altitude
is currently NOT included in my calculator. It would amount to about 0.2
minutes of arc at the altitude where you observed the Moon. The code is in there
(on my web site), and I will enable it again when I get a chance.
-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
