There have been many attempts over the decades to simplify celestial navigation. Now a new celestial nav simplification effort is about to launch called StarPoint. Still in the Kickstarter stage, StarPoint makes use of a small fixed optical device based on the Bris sextant originally developed by Swedish sailor Sven Yrvind. The StarPoint offering is more than merely a reselling of the Bris device, however. It’s a complete package that developer Brian Villmoare, assisted by fellow developer James Weisheit, has crafted to make celestial nav more accessible. Using the StarPoint system, users can get a lat/long fix with two sights of the sun. The first part of Villmoare’s StarPoint package is the sighting device. Based on the Bris sextant, the StarPoint device is two pieces of three-millimeter-thick glass that have…
There was a time not too long ago when I was a head magician of the local branch of the cult of celestial navigation; a cult that experienced its last hurrah through the early 1990s, before going underground with the emergence of GPS. During a relatively short period of time, there were various branches throughout the country, all practicing the art. My particular cabal was located in the northeastern U.S. I was pledged into this group, serving my apprenticeship with Eben Whitcomb, master of the schooner Harvey Gamage and celestial navigation wizard nonpareil. Along with others, I was wizard-in-training for a number of years, and for a short period of time, by default, I too held the title of wizard of celestial navigation. Despite my title, my raiments did not…
Editor’s note: In this installment of our celestial navigation series, we take a look at the arcane but still intriguing subject of lunar distance sights for finding time and longitude. In this series, we’ve started from the most basic concepts and worked our way through every type of sight in celestial navigation: sun sights, star sights, planet sights, moon sights, latitude from noon, latitude from Polaris, multiple body sights and a day at sea for the celestial navigator. If you’ve followed the installments in this series, you are well set up to navigate with celestial navigation. The only thing left is to get your sextant, watch, almanac and sight reduction tables and practice the different types of sights, the reductions and the plotting. Then go on a voyage or two…
Editor’s note: We’re revisiting this series on navigating by the sun, moon, planets and stars in the age of GPS because celestial nav is not only a viable backup to satellite navigation, but it is also a skill that ocean voyagers should have in their toolkit. In this series, we’ll cover all the basic knowledge you’ll require to get up to speed on this elegant and rewarding technique for finding your way at sea. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12 and Part 13. In this installment, we’ll explore the celestial navigator’s day at sea as he or she uses various types of sights during the course of the day. A hypothetical day at sea for the enthusiastic celestial navigator: sun LOPs, sun running…
Top, any two LOPs crossing can give us a fix position. Middle, for more confidence in our fix, we can use more LOPs. This is the classic “pinwheel” fix. Bottom, when the LOPs don’t all cross at a point, we have a “cocked hat” fix. Place the fix position in the center of the enclosed area. Editor’s note: We’re revisiting this series on navigating by the sun, moon, planets and stars in the age of GPS because celestial nav is not only a viable backup to satellite navigation, but it is also a skill that ocean voyagers should have in their toolkit. In this series, we’ll cover all the basic knowledge you’ll require to get up to speed on this elegant and rewarding technique for finding your way at sea.…
Editor’s note: We’re revisiting this series on navigating by the sun, moon, planets and stars in the age of GPS because celestial nav is not only a viable backup to satellite navigation, but it is also a skill that ocean voyagers should have in their toolkit. In this series, we’ll cover all the basic knowledge you’ll require to get up to speed on this elegant and rewarding technique for finding your way at sea. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11. In this installment, we’ll discover moon sights and how they add a useful celestial body to your arsenal. We will also look at how to use celestial navigation techniques to determine your vessel’s compass deviation. The two big celestial bodies for shooting…
Editor’s note: We’re revisiting this series on navigating by the sun, moon, planets and stars in the age of GPS because celestial nav is not only a viable backup to satellite navigation, but it is also a skill that ocean voyagers should have in their toolkit. In this series, we’ll cover all the basic knowledge you’ll require to get up to speed on this elegant and rewarding technique for finding your way at sea. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 and Part 10. In this installment, we’ll cover how to reduce a noon sight and also how to get latitude by shooting Polaris, the pole star. Possibly the easiest and quickest way of getting a line…
Editor’s note: We’re revisiting this series on navigating by the sun, moon, planets and stars in the age of GPS because celestial nav is not only a viable backup to satellite navigation, but it is also a skill that ocean voyagers should have in their toolkit. In this series, we’ll cover all the basic knowledge you’ll require to get up to speed on this elegant and rewarding technique for finding your way at sea. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 and Part 9. In this installment, we’ll cover how to reduce a planet sight; we’ll include a step-by-step breakdown of how to reduce star and planet sights, and we will also include a star sight problem to solve…
Editor’s note: We’re revisiting this series on navigating by the sun, moon, planets and stars in the age of GPS because celestial nav is not only a viable backup to satellite navigation, but it is also a skill that ocean voyagers should have in their toolkit. In this series, we’ll cover all the basic knowledge you’ll require to get up to speed on this elegant and rewarding technique for finding your way at sea. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8. In this installment, we’ll cover how to reduce a star sight and how to use HO 249 Vol. 1 to precalcuate what stars will be available. The GHA of a star is made up of two…
Sometime celestial navigation teacher James Austin provided us with this diagram he devised to help his students when he taught celestial navigation. Here’s his explanation: “I came up with this diagram to visually illustrate for students the goal of celestial navigation. It’s a way of showing the process of getting a bearing (‘azimuth’) and range (‘altitude’) of the celestial body’s GP from the ship, with the difference between Ho and Hc being the ‘intercept’ along the azimuth. It was devised as a pictorial pathway showing where each of the navigation volumes fit into the process. Most of my students liked the fact that they could look at this diagram to get re-oriented after being mired in numbers. It helped them to be reminded where they were…
