Celestial Mindmelt

This week has been a doozy.  We began with an overview on Azimuths, which is basically shooting a bearing to the sun. Then we progressed into learning about the sextant itself, Aries, Polaris and how to obtain Latitudes from them, then on to taking bearings from multiple celestial bodies and plotting them on a chart.
      Yesterday, we took the Sextants outside and played with them a little to help understand how to make adjusts and take bearings.  Pretty simple piece of equipment to use, but there's a few tweaks that you have to make before using.

Example of an Azimuth problem to solve for Declination

A Sextant

Today, the chart plotting process seemed to overwhelm the entire class, but as with anything, it will take time. Tomorrow, we work on everything that we've learned so far, and then we get to take actual bearings of the sun in the simulator and apply them to paper. Our theory test is on Monday, so we have all weekend to study, but it's gonna be a tough one.

IF I pass Celestial Nav, I'm going to celebrate well...