Next message: Frank Reed: "Re: Green Flash and Longitude"
Hello,
For what darkness it may shed on this topic, I recall seeing the Green Flash a couple of times in the lower Eastern Caribbean, say below 17 degrees N, and East of 63 degrees West. My impression was that the Flash covered an area of the horizon so wide as to only get a general bearing, and happened so quickly that unless you expected it, taking the time would be prone to error.
Can anyone else who has seen it confirm these impressions?
Joel Jacobs
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-------------- Original message from Bruce Stark <>: --------------
Frank,
You wrote:
I can't think of any way to make sense of the idea (green flash for
longitude??), . . .
This suggests that you've come to the point where your first inclination is to see the time-longitude problem from the same perspective as the eighteenth and early nineteenth century navigators. To my knowledge, no history of navigation has yet been written by anyone who's at ease in that way of thinking. I hope you'll consider writing such a history yourself.
Anyone hard wired in the twentieth century way of thinking will immediately see that by noting the time of a Green Flash (should you be so lucky as to see one) you'd have the makings of a longitude LOP. How accurate it would be is another question.
Bruce
