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I am off to the Libyan desert at the end of March to see the total eclipse
which has its maximum period of totality in the Southern Sahara. I will
then be spending a couple of weeks wandering around the South Eastern
Libyan desert with a group looking at various natural wonders, and
finishing off at Gebel Uweinat on the Libya Egypt border to see some
Saharan rock art.
The group will naturally have GPS receivers to keep them found, but that
need not stop me using celestial navigation to plot our progress - and
amuse the rest of the group showing them how it was done "in the old days"!
Of course, due to the high temperatures (40 to 50 Centigrade) corrections
will have to me made to the standard Altitude Correction tables. But it
occurred to me that the Refraction Correction Tables for Non Standard
Conditions in the Nautical Almanac may not be appropriate in the middle of
the Sahara, where the hot sand will bake the air near the ground.
Does anyone have any data on altitude corrections for desert conditions?
Thanks
Geoffrey Kolbe
