I studied celestial navigation many many years ago, but have forgotten almost absolutely everything as I’ve worked on offshore vessels where sextants have never seen the light of day.
As a reminder, does anyone know of any extremely simple concise guys of how to do it? Maybe including proformas that show the calculations step by step.
Most books on the topic out there are excessively complex and go into too much barely relevant detail.
I’ve found that most celestial books are overly simple and don’t even begin to touch on anything even remotely advanced. I can’t get to my books at the moment to give you recommendations though.
Bill Crawford’s celestial book. Call the Crawford Nautical School in Seattle to buy a copy.
I was more looking for a pdf or something that I can store on my laptop rather than a cumbersome book.
Hi @spork Go to your favorite search engine and type in “celestial navigation pdf” in the text field. The search query results might help you out? That way you can open the document and you can save it to your laptop. It’s worth a shot.
The “art” of celestrial navigation is not in the math but confidence in the sight you take. That only comes with practice. Apps for smartphones and software for laptops abound. Some free ones are here.
https://sourceforge.net/directory/?q=celestial+navigation
The link below is to the gear I used in 1981. A MSDOS Laptop was added to the mix in 1989.
https://saltair.pw/blog/index.php/2017/02/10/electronic-assisted-analog-navigation-circa-1981/
Celestial Navigation by David Burch
Second Edition
Hands down, The above book is awesome! everything is broken into clear sections. Each chapter tests you at the end to reaffirm what you just read.
I took the celestial class in Lauderdale and this book helped me gain abetter grasp of the topic.
Yeah, Burch has some good stuff. One thing I like about Burch is his take on the celestial sphere. It’s a concept that does nothing that adds any understanding to celestial nav.