These tables were designed for air navigation where weight and space are at a premium, however, they are very popular with sailors too due to the fact that Vol. 1 offers a speedier way to compute stars. Volume 1 contains some stars (whose declinations may be more than 29°) that are pre-selected for optimum viewing and direction. This volume is applicable for an 8 year period, centered on its Epoch date.

About the Manual Celestial Navigation Exercises for Class and Home Study was designed to facilitate the work of instructors using the free PowerPoint slide presentation available at CelestialNavigationBook.com. This exercise manual, available in hard copy and in PDF format for tablets, reproduces the questions posed at regular intervals throughout the slide presentation; it provides the work-forms guiding the calculations, and the solutions. Students taking a course from an instructor who follows the slide presentation will normally have the associated course book Celestial Navigation using the Sight Reduction Tables Pub. No. 249. In order to facilitate the download process, the free version of the exercise manual (available for download from CelestialNavigationBook.com), includes neither the Almanac nor the Sight Reduction Tables required for the calculations because these tables are identical to the ones in the course book. This complete version of the exercise manual, with all the required data tables in the appendix, will thus be useful mostly to navigators who do not have the course book but wish to practice on their own, as well as to students who follow the presentation and have the course book but do not wish to download and print 140 pages of questions and answers.

This manual has grown out of all the courses given by Dominique Prinet, a certified Instructor-Evaluator for Sail Canada who has been teaching celestial navigation since 2000. It has benefitted from the thoughtful contributions of over 100 students. The aim of Celestial Navigation is to give a sufficient grounding in the subject to determine position at sea using a sextant for fixes on the sun, moon, stars and planets. Furthermore, the material presented will prepare a reader who wishes to pursue a Celestial Navigation Certificate through self-study. The subject requires some comfort with the basic concepts of navigation, but the prospective navigator only needs to know how to add and subtract either times or angles. Lucid and well-paced, Celestial Navigation starts with fundamentals and definitions which ensure that a motivated student need not bring anything more to the table than his or her willingness to master the subject. Richly illustrated, it includes a chapter with more than forty pages of review exercises covering all topics. The cleverness of many of the concepts, explained here, will bring about great intellectual joy and satisfaction. Whether you are a recreational sailor or an individual pursuing professional certification as a navigator, Celestial Navigation will teach you what you need to know.

Hewitt Schlereth is a writer and sailing enthusiast.

Many books on celestial navigation take shortcuts in explaining concepts; incorrect diagrams and discussion are often used for the sake of moving the student along quickly. This book tells the true story-and the whole story. It conveys celestial navigation concepts clearly and in the shortest possible time.It's tailored for navigation in the GPS age-a time of computers, calculators, and web resources. Although it covers all of the traditional methods of 'working a sight, ' the primary thrust is using the (under $10) scientific calculator. By using equations that you key into your calculator, this book guides you toward a better understanding of the concepts of celestial navigation.You will learn novel ways to plot lines of position, ways to check your sextant accurately by star sights, and how to tell what time it is from a moon sight. The many appendices are a treasure of references and explanations of abstract ideas. Celestial Navigation is a crucial skill for the offshore navigator to know, this book provides the shortest path to that knowledge.

Traditional navigation with a sextant, an almanac, and a book of tables is still thriving, even with the availability of accurate, cheap GPS receivers. Batteries sometimes go dead, and electronic devices fail, especially in salt air. Also, it can be satisfying and fun to work out a position and plot it, all on your own - but getting good at it requires some practice.100 problems is a self-contained book of realistic celestial navigation problems, including excerpts of all the necessary Nautical Almanac pages and sight-reduction tables, with answers and explanations.

In the tradition of Dava Sobel's Longitude comes sailing expert David Barrie's compelling and dramatic tale of invention and discovery—an eloquent elegy to one of the most important navigational instruments ever created, and the daring mariners who used it to explore, conquer, and map the world. Since its invention in 1759, a mariner's most prized possession has been the sextant. A navigation tool that measures the angle between a celestial object and the horizon, the sextant allowed sailors to pinpoint their exact location at sea. David Barrie chronicles the sextant's development and shows how it not only saved the lives of navigators in wild and dangerous seas, but played a pivotal role in their ability to map the globe. He synthesizes centuries of seafaring history and the daring sailors who have become legend, including James Cook, Matthew Flinders, Robert Fitz-Roy, Frank Worsley of the Endurance, and Joshua Slocum, the redoubtable old "lunarian" and first single-handed-round-the-world yachtsman. He also recounts his own maiden voyage, and insights gleaned from his experiences as a practiced seaman and navigator. Full of heroism, danger, and excitement, told with an infectious sense of wonder, Sextant offers a new look at a masterful achievement that changed the course of history.