Next message: Royer, Doug: "Re: Green Flash and Longitude"
Bruce Stark, you wrote:
"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. "
Consider it? Yes. Even wrote quite a bit. Finish it?? Well, that depends on
whether I can think of a way to make it profitable --in a broad sense of the
word.
And:
"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."
Clearly it would not be particularly accurate --no more so than any other
sunset/sunrise LOP which means +/-5 or 10 minutes of arc error in the resulting
line of position.
Could I ask you to clarify something for me: have you yourself heard of this
before? Have you heard or read that the green flash can be used to determine
longitude (or at least a more or less north-south LOP)? Do you remember the
context of the discussion? Finally, do you recall any reason why someone
would have suggested using the green flash specifically, which is quite rare,
instead of timing an ordinary sunset?
-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
