Section 15: Essentials of Astronomical Navigation Course Notes
These are the notes for a course of my own devising covering the main elements of astro navigation. It is not a full exposition of the subject but does cover all you need to know to navigate by the sun, which is all I ever used when sailing on long passages years ago before GPS.
The section covers the following:
How astro works: celestial position, principle of the Mark St Helaire intercept
The running fix.
Latitude by meridian altitude.
How to use a sextant.
How to use the sight reduction tables.
Worked examples of sun - run - sun fixes.