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Online Almanac and Sight Declination Tables?

6K views 9 replies 7 participants last post by  dub420sailor 
#1 ·
Hello Everyone,

I am new to celestial navigation. I just purchased my first sextant, but I was wondering if anyone knew of online nautical almanac and/or sight declination tables? I don't really want to spend $60 for only half a year. I've looked on Google, but haven't really found anything.
 
#3 · (Edited)
navsoft.com used to have. but not any more. they had it on their website, i downloaded from their site "2012 almanc" on the begining of the yerar,
probably they started charging for it. there is still "GHA increments and corrections", "Moon Corrections", "Sight Corrections" etc..Download

you have almanac here...(this is actual almanac that i downloaded from their site in january).

2012 Nautical Almanac.rar - Speedy Share - upload your files here


 
#6 ·
As always, you Sailnet guys have come through! Thank you so much! I'm planning on at least attempting to learn the calcs so I need as little as possible, but from what I've heard this may take awhile. Trying to start out classic and easy and then move my way up.

Thanks again!
 
#7 ·
Have fun with it, but I'll submit that someone else is giving you the formulas, so you're just doing basic math. The hard core math is determining the table that you are looking to acquire. Imagine that? I don't think a computer doing the basic math is cheating all that much, but I understand if someone wants the no electricity approach. You are going to find that taking good sightings is the real talent, not crunching numbers. I would want to spend more time doing the former.
 
#8 ·
For sight reduction, just use buy a cheap programable calculator and use "Bowditch's Third Method" (Google it). For a nautical almanac you can either use the free links others have posted or for a $15 get a hard copy from Amazon.com: 2012 U.S. Naval Observatory Nautical Almanac (New) (9781616085742): U.S. Naval Observatory, UK Hydrographic Office: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512KA8lj6AL.@@AMEPARAM@@512KA8lj6AL (it also has a "concise" sight reduction table, but it's a bit complicated to use).
 
#10 ·
It's funny, someone told me that today. I'm going to check it out. I just took my first sight yesterday and wrote down all the info + GPS coordinates and I am currently going through the DVD Celestial Navigation Simplified to try out the sun sight process and see how close I got. After getting good with the tables and all of the different types of sights, then I want to mess with the formulas a little for sight reduction instead of using the tables, but that's for later. Definitely some really cool stuff!
 
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