UPDATED
January 11, 2021

Ocean Navigator has produced an excellent celestial navigation series over the years.  The latest series is listed below with direct links to the article and a synopsis.

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. 

Source: Celestial navigation series, part one – Ocean Navigator – July/August 2018
Navigating by celestial is an easy-to-learn, invaluable backup skill. An introduction to celestial navigation.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part two – Ocean Navigator – September/October 2018
In this installment, we’ll discuss how to make our own chart for plotting our celestial navigation data at sea, and we’ll review dead reckoning, plotting, current vectors and compensating for current.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part three – Ocean Navigator – November/December 2018
In this installment, we’ll discuss the navigational astronomy of the sun, the celestial sphere, the coordinate system used on the celestial sphere and also the navigational triangle.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part four – Ocean Navigator – January/February 2019
In this installment, we’ll cover Local Hour Angle (LHA), and determining assumed longitude and assumed latitude. We’ll also look at the spherical trigonometric process for doing sight reduction.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part five – Ocean Navigator – March/April 2019
In this installment, we’ll cover sextants and sight taking, and the corrections you’ll need to apply to your sight.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part six – Ocean Navigator – May/June 2019
In this installment, we’ll cover time, time zones and the Nautical Almanac.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part seven – Ocean Navigator – July/August 2019
In this installment, we’ll cover the HO 249 sight reduction tables and how to plot a line of position (LOP).

Source: Celestial navigation series, part eight – Ocean Navigator – September/October 2019
In this installment, we’ll cover running fixes and the hierarchy of positions from dead reckoning position to multiple simultaneous lines of position fixes.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part nine – Ocean Navigator – November/December 2019
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.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part ten- Ocean Navigator – January/February 2020
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 as a way to review what you learned in the last installment.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part eleven – Ocean Navigator – March 4, 2020
In this installment, we’ll cover how to reduce a noon sight and also how to get latitude by shooting Polaris, the pole star.

Source: Celestial navigation series, part twelve – Ocean Navigator – April 30, 2020
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.

Recommend0 recommendationsPublished  in Celestial Navigation

Copyright © Celestaire, Inc. 2023 | All Rights Reserved.

All files and information contained in this Website or Blog are copyright by Celestaire, Inc., and may not be duplicated, copied, modified or adapted, in any way without our written permission. Our Website or Blog may contain our service marks or trademarks as well as those of our affiliates or other companies, in the form of words, graphics, and logos. Your use of our Website, Blog or Services does not constitute any right or license for you to use our service marks or trademarks, without the prior written permission of Celestaire, Inc.. Our Content, as found within our Website, Blog and Services, is protected under United States and foreign copyrights. The copying, redistribution, use or publication by you of any such Content, is strictly prohibited. Your use of our Website and Services does not grant you any ownership rights to our Content.

CONTACT US

We're not around right now. But you can send us an email and we'll get back to you, asap.

Sending
ajax-loader

Log in with your credentials

or    

Forgot your details?

Create Account