UPDATER

for the

NAUTICAL ALMANAC

by

Michael Pepperday
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ALMANAC UPDATER
This Updater permits any out-dated Nautical Almanac
to be used to find current sun and star positions.
The Polaris table may also be used.
The procedures involve the same number of steps as
consulting the current edition.

Copyright C Meridian Survey Services 1986

Meridian Survey Services, PO Box 1264, Booragoon, WA 6154, Australia. (09)330 2402
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THE NAUTICAL ALMANAC

The purpose of an almanac is to give the declination (dec) and the Greenwich Hour Angle
(GHA) of a heavenly body at the instant the body was observed. The Nautical Almanac is
published annually by the Nautical Almanac Offices of Great Britain .and the United States. It lists
dec and GHA of various bodies for every hour on the hour throughout the year for which it is valid.
To find the dec and GHA for the exact moment of observation the navigator interpolates using the
tables printed on tinted paper at the back of the almanac.

The Nautical Almanac itself provides an explanation and examples of its normal use on pages
255 and 256. If you are not too sure about it you might practise with the star examples on page
256. Don't worry about the sun: with the Updater quite a different procedure applies.

CORRECTIONS TO ALMANACS

To bring an old almanac up to date we apply corrections. For stars there is a GHA Aries
correction. For the sun the correction is a special "datum time" (DT) shift.

The actual corrections depend on both the year the almanac was published and the year the
almanac is being used. Corrections come in four different series depending on the year of
publication:

- leap year edition

- year after leap year edition
- two years after (or before) a leap year edition
- one year before a leap year

The tables of Annex A give the Aries and DT corrections permitting each kind of almanac to
be used for 16 years following publication year. One of these lists applies (possibly with
adjustment) to your old almanac, and one pair of values from that list will allow your
almanac to be used this year.

For purposes of illustration let us suppose that it is now 1993 and you are using a 1986
almanac. The table headed 1986 - le "leap year + 2" must be used. The corrections given for
1993 are

GHA Aries corn _ +18'.0

sun DT shift = + 7h

In practice you might write these on the front cover of your 1986 edition. They stay the same
for the whole of 1993.
In the examples which follow, the corrections are explicitly applied so that the method is clear.
How to make the corrections "vanish" is then shown. Overleaf you will find an excerpt from the
1986 almanac which is used in the examples. For practice there are more examples on page
12.
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SUN
Method 1) Apply the DT shift to the GMT (nearest whole hour) to obtain the DT. 2) Enter the
almanac with this DT and:
- take out the sun's dec in the usual way.
- take out the "datum GHA" by taking the degrees at Oh (NOTE: Oh)
and the minutes at the DT.
3) Convert the original GMT to arc using the Annex C conversion table.
4) Add the arc to the datum GHA to give the sun's GHA.

Example 1, Sun. Using a 1986 almanac (see excerpt opposite), find the dec

and GHA of the sin at GMT 20 13 46 on 11 April 1993. From Annex A the
sun DT shift is +7 .
1) DT = 20h (nearest hour) + 7h
= 27 which is to say 03 on 12 April.
2) .At DT of 03h on 12 April: The sun's dec is 8°
32'.4. The datum GHA is 179° 45'.8.
3) Turn to Annex C to convert the original GMT of 20h 13m 46s into arc. It may take you a
minute or two to sort out how this table works. You will find that you can write down the arc
directly. This is one of those things that is easier done than said. By way of explanation: look
through the time column for the nearest value below the required time. In this case it is 20 12m
which the table tells us converts to 303 degrees. Convert the remaining lm 46s using the right
hand section of the table. lm 46s converts to 26'.5. Make sure you understand how this was
done. In this case then, the arc is 303° 26'.5.

4) The arc plus the datum GHA gives 483° 12'.3 which is the sun's GHA.
Summarising the above:
GHA dec
datum GHA at DT of 3h 12 April = 179° 45.8 N. 8° 32.4
arc equal to GMT of 20H 13m 46s = 303 26.5
GHA = 483 12.3
ie 123°12.3

So the dec and GHA of the sun at 20h 13m 46s on 11 April have been found.

It may occur to you that the current almanac could be looked up like this, the DT correction
being nil. Indeed it can - and it is arguably easier than the normal leafing through the shaded
increment pages. You will find the time to arc conversion table also in the almanac on page
277. All this table does, by the way, is multiply the GMT by fifteen.

Compared with consulting a current almanac the extra work involved consisted only of
adding two whole numbers to get the DT. This addition (or subtraction - sometimes the shift
is negative) may be eliminated by using a "DT shift bookmark".
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STARS
Method: 1) Enter the almanac with GMT hours and take out GHA Aries for the hour. 2) From the
tinted pages take out the minutes and seconds increment. 3) Take the Aries correction from
Annex A. 4) Take the dec and SHA of the star from Annex B. 5) Add the above (except the dec) to
get the GHA of the star.
With the exception of step 3 this is the same as using a current almanac.
Annex B is a catalogue of the standard 57 "selected stars" plus Polaris. These 57 stars are the ones
printed at every opening of the almanac. Annex B gives star dec and SHA for the 1st of January
and 1st of July each year. For in-between months you may interpolate, but there is no need to go
to any trouble - a rough guess will be fine. If you took the nearest tabulation and used it directly
the error would in most cases be negligible for the stars hardly move in six months. (Yes, that
applies to the SHA Polaris too, despite the appearance of large movement.)
Example 2, Star. Using a 196 almanac (see page 7), find the GHA and dec of Spica at GMT 16 47
25 on 11 April 1993. For a 1986 almanac being used during 1993 the Aries correction is +18'.0.

The only difference between this and the normal procedure using a current almanac was the
addition of that Aries correction. Though this is hardly arduous we can, like the sun DT shift,
make it disappear.
On a voyage, one tends to keep on shooting the same stars every day. The SHA of a star is
constant for at least the period of a typical ocean voyage. Mostly, the Aries correction is constant
for a year. So the last two lines of the above addition would be the same every time Spica was
observed. Why not add them together on the first day of the trip and be done with it? Call the
result "SHA(amended)". Thus we would have

The same goes for the remaining stars in daily use: add the Aries correction to their SHAs
and use the resulting SHA(a) values for the rest of the voyage. If you write the SHA(a)s, along
with the declinations, in your computation book they will be to hand when required.
So whenever you want the current GHA of a star you find the GHA Aries for the instant of time in
your old almanac in precisely the normal manner then add your SHA(a) to it. The procedure
becomes identical with normal almanac usage. The sole extra effort is to write down, at the
beginning of the voyage, the SHA(a) values for the stars you are using.
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EXTENDED STAR LIST
The 58 stars of the Annex B catalogue are bright stars scattered about the whole sky. Observing
any other one during twilight is unlikely - very unlikely. However it is possible and the Nautical
Almanac gives a list of 173 stars (including the 58) on pages 268 to 273. Is there any way the
values for these stars from your old almanac can be adapted should the need arise? Yes there
is. If you observe a star from the extended list you must find a nearby star that is one of the 58,
then by comparing its values as given in your old almanac with its current values as listed in
Annex B, determine how much that region of the sky has moved in the intervening years. You
then apply that same movement to the star observed. The charts of pages 266 and 267 may be
used to see which selected star is nearest.
POLARIS TABLE
Annex B includes Polaris but some people like to use the almanac's pole star tables of pages
274 to 276 for latitude determination. Naturally you cannot use an out of date almanac
without correcting it. The pole star table is designed such that there are three numbers to be
looked up and added together. The only one of these that changes every year is a0.

From the table below take the annual correction for the LHA Aries column which applies to
your sights and multiply it by the number of years since publication of your edition. For
instance if your almanac is 8 years old and the LHA Aries is from 130 to 139 degrees then -.2
x 8 = -1'.6. Because it varies only slowly you will only have to do this multiplication once per
trip (twice if you take both dusk and dawn sights). The 1'.6 is a correction to a , but here's a
short cut: instead of taking the 1'.6 off a take it off the sum of al and a2. Then you'll only have
to do that once per voyage too.

Annual corrections to a0 in minutes of arc.

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CORRECTIONS FOR ANY ALMANAC

If your almanac is not 1984, 85, 86 or 87 you must rewrite the year column of the appropriate
Annex A correction list. For example if you have a 1982 almanac you use the same list as 1986
because it is the same kind of year, namely two years removed from a leap year. Just take a
pencil and rewrite the years starting with 1982 at the top, viz:

As you can see 1984 gets two mentions; so does 1988. A different pair of corrections applies
during January and February in leap years - except where your out of date almanac happens to
be, itself, a leap year edition. In that case, as Annex A shows, the corrections are a different pair
during January and February every year except leap years. It might seem that this would make a
leap year edition clumsy to use but in practice two months is a long time at sea and it hardly
matters.

Once you have settled which correction list you need (rewriting the year column if necessary)
your almanac is good for 16 years after publication. Sixteen years probably suffices for
practical purposes, however if you wish you can push it further. To form the sun DT list keep
subtracting 5.8 hours per year, adding 24 hours every February 29 -except for the list for a
leap year almanac which is formed by adding 18.2 hours every year and subtracting 24 at the
end of every February except in leap years. For the GHA Aries correction subtract 14'.33 per
year adding 59'.15 every February 29 - except for corrections to a leap year edition which are
formed by adding 44'.82 every year and subtracting 59'.15 every end of February except in leap
years.

PRACTICE EXAMPLES

The worked examples which follow suffer from an unavoidable lack of realism. In the real situation
corrections are constant for long periods and you use one column of Annex B for months. When
doing these examples you must keep changing corrections (so a DT bookmark is not worth
making) and you have to look up different places in the star lists and compute SHAW each time. In
the sun examples the GMT is rounded to the nearest whole hour before adding it to the DT
correction.

For comparison purposes true values for the examples 1 to 8 are:

At least for almanacs less than 15 or 20 years old the error using the Updater should
seldom exceed 0'.5.
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Using a 1986 Nautical Almanac (see page 7) find the dec and GHA of:
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ANNEX A

CORRECTIONS TO ALMANACS
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ANNEX A

CORRECTIONS TO ALMANACS

"JF" indicates the corrections apply in January and February only.

For an almanac other than 1984 to 1987, choose the appropriate table and
rewrite the year column. (See page 11 for details.)
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FOREVER ALMANAC
To navigate with the sun and stars you have to be able to find the position of the heavenly
body at the moment of observation. Normally this means you bud; every year, a new
Nautical Almanac - and throw away last year's edition.
Not any more. Not if you have the almanac Updater. The Updater lets you use an old
almanac until it falls to pieces.
An approximate or emergency method? No - it is appropriate to all celestial navigation using
the sun and stars. A clumsy, complicated, procedure? No it is as convenient as using the
current almanac: the number of steps is the same.
The age of the almanac is not important: at fifteen or twenty years old it is still fully
adequate. The almanac may be any edition - whichever you happen to possess.
This Updater lets an outdated almanac yield current sun and star positions.

MERIDIAN SURVEY SERVICES

P.O. BOX 1264 BOORAGOON
WA 6154 AUSTRALIA