Principles of Celestial Navigation


A Day in the Life of a Navigator » Three-Star Fix, Morning » Exercise: Sight Reduction for Deneb and Fomalhaut

Chief Quartermaster Tim Sheedy, U.S. Navy, demonstrates how various celestial sights are reduced and plotted during a day in the life of a navigator

Chief Sheedy: Now that we’ve observed Capella, we’re somewhere on that line of position, but how do we find out exactly where we’re at? We observe other stars. In this case, we observe Deneb. The sextant altitude was 49 degrees 02 decimal 1 minutes. At time 0800 00 seconds GMT, we observed Fomalhaut. The sextant altitude was 27 degrees 00 decimal 4 minutes.