By the Stars!

– Celestial Navigation with X-

Plane 11

By Guest ContributorMarch 20, 2020

Old school navigators rejoice as we take a look at celestial navigation in X-Plane 11!

Part 1
We live in a time where navigation has become easy. Satellite based navigation is taken for
granted and even our cell phones come with the ability to tell you exactly where you are, but
it was not always this way. Back in the days before GPS and IRS/INS systems, aircraft
navigated over the oceans in the same way sailing ships had done since the mid 1700’s – by
Celestial Navigation. Using nothing more than a Sextant (modified for aircraft use), a
chronometer (accurate clock), and a Celestial Almanac, it was possible to navigate with
surprising accuracy.

Thanks to Casper ‘The AlmightySnark’ de Wit’s app, we can now try our hand at navigating
in X-Plane 11 by using the stars, planets, the Sun and the Moon. It takes some effort to find
your position using this method, but it is immensely satisfying when, after several hours of
flying across an ocean, your planned destination airfield comes into view… and you didn’t
look at a GPS or Moving Map at all during the flight.

All you need is X-Plane 11, Stellarium (freeware), Google Earth (also free), Casper’s app
(free too) and either a nautical almanac or an app like ezAlmanac. Installation and setup
instructions for Casper’s app can be found at his GitHub page linked above.

ezAlmanac
Optional, but recommended, you may want to pick up ezAlmanac, which will make
navigating the tables very straight forward. You can pick up a Nautical Almanac online for
free though, and so ezAlmanac is entirely optional.

ezAlmanac by ezCelestial LLC is an app available for both Windows 10 and iPad that I
highly recommend. It is a one stop shop that includes all the almanac tables you will need. If
you don’t want to manually wade through the look up tables for every fix then this app will
do it all for you. Most importantly, if you let it do the work, it will show you how it came to
it’s solution by highlighting where it pulled the data from within the lookup tables. Before
long, you will soon have no trouble doing each step yourself (if you want to).

I recommend getting the student version, and then buying the current year’s almanac from
within the app. The Pro version has many years worth of historical almanac data, but we are
only really interested in the current year. If you prefer, you can also purchase a printed copy
of their Almanac from Amazon at a reasonable price for the current year ($9.99)

Basic principles of celestial navigation and how we can

make it work with X-Plane
This part of the tutorial is going to be a very basic discussion on how to calculate a position
fix using at least three star ‘sightings’. We will then use Google Earth to plot our position.
Cygon_Parrot will take things a step further in the next part. As a disclaimer, I should make it
clear that I’m no expert. I have never actually used Celestial Navigation in the real world.
Having said that, the basics are not all that hard to grasp.

First we need to understand a few abstract concepts. The first being that of the Celestial
Sphere. To an observer on the Earth, the stars seem fixed in relation to each other and we
have no sense of their distance. To the unaided eye, the stars could very well be all at the
same distance from us, pin pricks of light fixed to the inside of a large sphere with the Earth
at it’s center.

Let’s pick a star – we will say it is Arcturus.

Looking at Arcturus, we note that it is 50º above the horizon as we read it on a Sextant. If we
were to move our location on the Earth, the star would appear in a different position in the
sky from our perspective. If we move directly away from the star, it will appear to move
closer to the horizon. If we move towards the star, it will appear higher in the sky. Continuing
to move our position towards the star would eventually put it at 90º above the horizon, right
above our heads, also referred to as being at Zenith. For every star that you see, there is a
position on the surface of the Earth where it would appear to be directly above us. In Celestial
Navigation, we call this position the Star’s Ground Point (GP).

If we measure the angular distance from the horizon to a star with a Sextant, we can quite
easily determine how far we are away from it’s Ground Point. From the first location where
we viewed Arcturus, we measured it to be 50° above the horizon. We call that the Sextant
height (Hs).

For the star to be directly overhead, it would have to be 40° higher than we are seeing it now.
With the knowledge that 1° of Latitude is equal to 60nm on the surface of the Earth, we can
determine that we are 60 x 40 = 2400nm from the star’s Ground Point. So, to find the
distance to the Star’s GP the math is 90º (Zenith), minus the star’s Sextant Height (Hs) and
then you multiply by 60.

As another example, if the star was 43º above the horizon, we would be (90-43)x60 =
2820nm from the star’s ground point. Remember, that every full degree equals 60 nm, which
makes it important to measure as accurately as possible, preferably to the nearest 10th of a
degree or better if you can.

Ok, so, we now know our distance from the ground point. If we can determine the exact
position of the Ground Point, we could plot it on a map and draw a circle around it with a
radius of the distance we calculated. Our position would be somewhere on the edge of that
circle.
Finding the position of a star’s Ground Point would be simple enough if the Earth was not
spinning. The Ground Point would be a fixed position on the surface of the Earth and it
would never change. But the Earth does spin, one revolution every 24 hours (roughly), which
means a star’s ground point is a moving target. Fortunately the Earth’s rotation is about a
single axis, and is predictable. The Latitude of the Ground Point doesn’t change much over
the course of a day/night. So little in fact that we can consider it a constant value for our
purposes.

Due to the planet’s rotation, the GP moves West at a rate of 15º of Longitude per hour
(360°/24 hours in a day = 15° per hour). At the Equator, where 1º of Longitude = 60nm, a
star’s GP would race West at 15 x 60nm = 900 knots! This makes it very important to take
careful note of the time when you record your sightings, and to take them in as short a time
span as possible.

When we talk about a position on the Earth, we use Latitude and Longitude. We use a similar
system for the sky. Because we can’t gauge the distance of the stars through naked eye
observation, to us, looking at the night sky is like looking at a flat 2D image projected onto
the inside of a huge sphere, with the Earth at it’s center (see link above for the Celestial
Sphere). As with the surface of the Earth, we have a prime meridian for the sky, that stretches
from the Celestial North Pole, which is directly over the Earth’s Geographic North pole,
down to the Celestial South pole, which is, as you might have guessed, directly above the
Earth’s Geographic South Pole. This line in sky is known as “The First Point of Aries” and is

often labeled simply as ︎. It is in effect, the Greenwich Meridian of the sky. We derive all
the star co-ordinates based on this meridian and the celestial equator. The direct equivalent of
Latitude is referred to as Declination, and for Longitude, we have the Sidereal Hour Angle
(SHA). Unlike longitude for the earth, the Sidereal Hour Angle values are all West of the

First Point of Aries ︎. It all sounds rather complex, but once you get your head around it,

it all makes sense (trust me ).

To find the ground point of a star, we look up the Star’s Declination, which equals the

Latitude, and then we need to work out where the First Point of Aries ︎is in relation to
the Greenwich Meridian. This is called the Greenwich Hour Angle. We then add the star’s
SHA value to the Aries Greenwich Hour Angle. All this information can be found on the
daily page of the Nautical Almanac.

This is part of the Daily Page taken from the Nautical Almanac:
To find the Ground Point of the Star Arcturus at 12:00 UTC/Zulu on July 21st 2019, we look
up the Greenwich Hour Angle of Aries, which is 118° 57.9 Minutes West (of the Greenwich
Meridian), and add 145° 51.9 Minutes (the Sidereal Hour Angle of Arcturus).

The easiest way to add the two angles is to first add the minutes together (57.9 + 51.9 = 109.8
minutes). We subtract 60 (a whole degree) to leave 49.8 minutes, and add the degree to the
sum of the Aries Greenwich Hour Angle (118°) and Arcturus’ Sidereal Hour Angle (145º)…
so 118+145+1 = 264º and 49.8 minutes West of the Greenwich Meridian.

We talk about Longitude co-ordinates as being either East or West of Greenwich. This means
we can only have Longitude up to a maximum of 180º West of Greenwich. Any more than
180º and we move into the Eastern Hemisphere. And so we have a final step because 264°
49.8’ West of Greenwich is actually 95° 10.2’ East of the Prime Meridian. We can work this
out a couple of ways. If we want to work within the degrees, decimal minutes format, we just
subtract 264º from 360º which gives us 96º and then subtract the 49.8 minutes, which leaves
95º 10.2 minutes.

The other way is to convert 264º 49.8 minutes into a decimal value. To do that we divide 49.8
by 60 to give 0.83 and tag it onto the 264º to give 264.83º. We now subtract that from 360 to
give 95.17º East. We can convert back to Degrees and minutes by multiplying the .17º by 60
which equals 10.2 minutes, so 95º 10.2 Minutes East.

The Declination of Arcturus is N19º 05.2, which directly relates to Latitude, and so the
Ground Point of Arcturus at 12:00Z on the 21st July 2019 was N19º 05.2’ E095º 10.2’

The table above works well for star sightings taken at precisely the top of each hour, but that
isn’t always practical. You might want to get a positional fix at a different point in the hour.
Fortunately, there are separate Increments and Corrections tables that will give you the
correction needed for every minute and second of an hour…
The page above provides the incremental correction needed for sightings taken at 28, and 29
minutes past the hour. If we took our sighting of Arcturus at 12:28 and 35 seconds UTC, we
would add an additional 7º and 9.9 minutes to the Aries Greenwhich Hour Angle for 12:00
UTC, and then add the Sidereal Hour Angle of the star in question. Therefore, at 12:28:35
UTC the Ground Point for Arcturus would be N19º 05.2 W271º 59.7’ , which we would
convert into N19º05.2 E088º 0.3’ and we know we are 2400nm away from it.
We can also make a small correction for atmospheric defraction, based on the angular height
of the star when we observed it. When a star is closer to the horizon, you are looking through
more of the Earth’s atmosphere than you would for a star high in the sky, and this can slightly
bend(defract) the light of the star, giving you a slightly inaccurate sextant reading. The
following table gives you the required correction:
We said that Arcturus was at 50º when we observed it with our sextant. Looking at the Stars
and Planets column, we can see that between 48º 47’ and 52º 18’, we should subtract 0.8
minutes from the sextant reading for the star. In our example, 50º – 0.8’ = 49º 59.2’ = 49.98°.
Before, we were using ‘Sextant Height’ for our calculation of distance, but with corrections
applied, we end up with a value called Height Observed (Ho). If we re-run our distance
calculation with Height Observed instead of Sextant Height, we get (90º (Zenith) – 49.98) x
60 = 2401.2nm from the star’s Ground Point. In this case, it made our calculation 1.2 nm
farther out from the Star’s Ground Point. For the purposes of navigating an airplane, where
we hopefully have a good view of our surroundings for several miles, or we just need to get
close enough to our destination to pick up a NDB, 1.2 nm shouldn’t make all that much
difference to us, but errors do add up, and so it makes sense to apply these corrections and be
as accurate as possible.

Now we have all the information we need to plot the Star’s Ground Point using Google Earth.
You just drop a pin, and enter the Lat and Long values we have calculated. Once the Pin is in
place, we can use the Circle tool to draw a circle around the position of the pin, and extend it
out to have a radius of 2401.2 NM (be sure to set the distance units to NM for the circle).
With the circle drawn at the desired radius, we can say that our position, at the time we took
the star sighting, was somewhere on the edge of the circle we just drew. The Circle is called a
line of position. We know we are somewhere on that line.

To complete our position fix, we need to repeat this whole process using more star sightings,
taken at the same time as the one we took for Arcturus. When we plot the different star’s
positions and lines of position, the circles should all cross at a common point. Your position
is at that point.

Here is an example of a fix using four star sightings, plotted on Google Earth… In this case
we seem to be somewhere close to Boston, MA.
As I am sure you can see, this process takes some time. I am still new to this, and so a 3 star
fix can take me about 30 minutes to complete from start to finish. That means my position fix
is half an hour old by the time I have everything plotted. If I am flying along with a ground
speed of 200 knots, I’m already 100nm farther along my track than the position fix I have just
finished with. I would now have to use dead reckoning based on my calculated ground speed
and track to get an updated position estimate.

After all that, we can break the workflow down into the following steps:

1. Take your star sightings. Record the Altitude as precisely as you can, and the UTC
time you took the measurement down to the second (as close as possible). Do his for
at least 3 of the navigation stars, as quickly as you can.
2. Work out the distance from your location to the first star’s Ground Point (GP)
Observed Height = Sextant Height – atmospheric correction.
90° (Zenith) – the Observed Height of the star then multiply by 60. It is easier to
convert the observed height into decimal degrees. Eg. if we have an observed height
of 50° 35’ , 35 minutes divided by 60 = 0.583, so we have an observed height of
50.583°

90-50.583 = 39.417
39.417 x 60 = 2365nm

3. From the daily page in the Almanac, find the GHA for Aries at the hour of your star
sightings (UTC). Use the increments table to add correction for minutes and seconds
past the hour.
Add the star’s SHA value to give the GHA of the star.

If the star’s GHA the value is less than 180° then the GHA = Longitude in Degrees West.

If the star’s GHA is greater than 180° then subtract it from 360. If the resulting figure has a
negative value then you have the GP Longitude in degrees East. If the resulting figure is a
positive value, then you have the Longitude in degrees West

The star’s Dec value on the daily page is equal to the Ground Point’s Latitude.

4. In Google Earth, drop a pin at the Lat and Long co-ordinates we have just worked out,
and then draw a circle around it with a radius of our calculated distance from the GP.
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 for the other star sightings that you recorded. Your position
is where the circles intersect.
6. Use dead reckoning to calculate the position at the current time based on your ground
speed and track to account for the time spent working on the celestial fix.

1:60 rule for drift correction.

Invariably, after you have worked out your position fix, and compare it to your planned
course line, you will find that you will have drifted a little to the left or right of the intended
track. We know that we are going to have to turn back towards the destination point for that
leg. The question is, how much of a turn do we have to make? Fortunately, we have the 1 in
60 rule that will give us the answer.

The 1 in 60 rule states that if we fly 60nm and find that we are 1nm off track, then our track
error is 1º.

We can utilize this rule for other distances and drift errors using some simple math:

(Nautical Miles off track x 60) / Nautical Miles flown = Track error in degrees.

Turning back towards the desired track by this number of degrees would take out the drift,
but leave you flying parallel to it. You will have to apply an additional correction to fly
towards the destination.

(Nautical Miles off track x 60) / Nautical Miles remaining to the destination.

Your course correction would then be the sum of the two.

As an example, if we want to fly from Airport A to airport B. The distance is 145nm on a

magnetic heading of 230°. After flying for 95nm we find we are 12nm right of track.
So, the math is: (12×60)/95 = 7.57° off track.
We have 50nm to go, and so the additional correction will be (12×60) / 50 = 14.4°
This means that we we should turn left 7.57+14.4 = 21.97° (ok, just fly 22° left ;), and if
nothing changes (airspeed, wind speed and direction), you should fly directly to the
destination.

Example flight:
Here is a quick example flight. I intentionally used a rough figure for the cruise speed and
altitude, as I wanted to create some drift that would need to be corrected. For this flight, we
are going to take a B25 from LaGuardia International Airport, and fly directly to the L. F.
Wade International Airport on the island of Bermuda. This is a 671nm flight, mostly over
featureless ocean. I planned at a true airspeed of 200 Knots at 8000 ft.

The navlog generated by SkyVector.com:

We can see the important details are the Magnetic Heading, which is pretty much 150° for the
whole leg, and the ETE, which is 3 hours and 8 minutes.

We take off and I make a note of the coast out point…

We crossed the coast at 2200z, 2nm East of the planned course. I placed a pin to mark this in
Google Earth.
Although I planned to fly at 8000ft, I had to climb up to 20000ft to get above the cloud layer
(we need to be able to see the stars if we are going to keep within the spirit of things)…

We then continued on a heading of 150° for the next hour. At this point, I jumped into
Stellarium to take our star sightings…
My sightings were as follows:

 Star Enif at 2301Z was 45° 57’ above the horizon.

 Star Rasalhague at 2302Z was 57° 28’ above the horizon.
 Star Vega at 2303Z was at 82° 44’ above the horizon.

For Enif, the Altitude correction was zero and so 45° 57’ is good:
45° 57’ translates to 45.95° in decimal degrees. To find the distance from Enif’s Ground
Point we subtract 45.95 from 90 to give us 44.05 and multiply that by 60 to give us 2643nm.

We now look up the Aries GHA for the hour of the sighting (hour 23 as the sighting was
taken at 2301), which is found on the Daily Pages of the Almanac. For 2300Z on the 2nd
October 2019, the Aires GHA is 356° 22.1’.
Next we add the increments for 1 minute, zero seconds past the hour, using the appropriate
Increments page. For 1 minute and zero seconds past the hour, we add 15.0’.
This gives the Greenwich Hour Angle (GHA) for Aries at 2301z as being 356° 37.1’

We now add Enif’s Sidereal Hour Angle, found in the right hand column of the Daily Page.
In this case, it is 33° 42.7’. To get the GHA for Enif, we add the SHA to the Aires GHA to
give us 390° 19.8’
Because Enif’s GHA is greater than 360°, we subtract 360°, leaving us with 30° 19.8’ West
of the Greenwich Meridian. Enif’s Declination value is N 09° 8.1’ (found in the right side
column of the daily page).

At the end of all that, we have the Ground Point at 2301Z at N09° 58.1 W030° 19.8’ and a
distance of 2643nm.

We now repeat the process for the Rasalhague and Vega sightings. After that, we plot the
ground points in Google Earth and draw circles around them with an appropriate radius…

Here we can see the ground points plotted with their range rings. The smaller circle is for the
Vega sighting. The Ground Point was just 436nm away from our position at the time we took
the sightings.

Zooming in, I dropped a pin at the point where the circles all converge…
Our Fix position is N36°50’40.66″ W68°53’23.36″

It took me almost 40 minutes to go through that process with the three stars. With practice
that will get much quicker but some dead reckoning will always be necessary to estimate
your position in the present moment.

From the position fix, and using the measuring tool in Google Earth, we traveled 314nm in
the hour from Coast Out to the Fix. That means we are moving quite a bit faster than
anticipated, probably due to higher winds at 20000ft. To give us some time for the Dead
Reckoning calculations, I pick a time a few minutes in the future to use for our position
estimate 2345Z. That is almost 45 minutes after the sightings were taken. So we should be
0.75 x 314nm = 235.5 nm beyond the fix, on a straight line that starts at the coast out point,
passes through the fix and continues on… So I drop a pin at that point, and measure how far
off course I am, again, using the measuring tool in Google Earth:
At this point we will be 21.6nm left of our intended course 550nm from the coast out point.
Using the 1 in 60 rule:
(21.6 x 60) / 550 = 2.35° left of course.
We estimate that we have 105nm left to run before arriving at Bermuda.
(21.6 x 60) / 105 = 12.34° of correction.

So that is 2.35+12.34 = 14.69° total correction to the right. At 2345Z I turned 15° to the right.

With 105nm left to run and at an estimated ground speed of 314 Knots, we should be in the
vicinity of Bermuda in about 20 minutes or 00:05Z.

After anxiously looking ahead into the inky black night, it was with immense relief that I
spotted lights at our 11 O’Clock. There is nothing else out here, so that has to be Bermuda.
Mission accomplished! Although for some reason they didn’t want to turn on the runway
lights for me. That made things interesting!
Actual route flown…
As you can see, with even just a single position fix, we were able to make a good estimate of
our position at a later time, estimate how far off course we would be at that point, and then
calculate a course correction to get us close enough to find the destination.

Celestial Navigation is increasingly a lost art, especially in the aviation world. Learning the
basic theory and using it with X-Plane will give you a new perspective on something we take
for granted these days, along with a whole new level of respect for those who flew (or sailed)
across the globe using nothing but dead reckoning, the stars, the Sun and Planets to find their
way.

This concludes this part of the Tutorial. The use of Google Earth has simplified the process
significantly, but they didn’t have that tool back in the day. With the basic knowledge you
now have of how celestial navigation works, Cygon_Parrot will walk us through ‘Sight
Reduction’, the method used by real world celestial navigators for plotting, and also
obtaining an Estimated Position using a single sighting, which is useful when you only have a
single celestial body available (ie in the daytime when you only have the Sun to play with).

– Paul Rix

Thanks to Paul Rix, Casper “The Almighty Snark” de Wit, and Cygon Parrot for this
fascinating look into celestial navigation in X-Plane. Casper wrote the app that pulls the
data from X-Plane and injects it into Stellarium. Part 1 of the tutorial (by Paul Rix), is aimed
at introducing the concepts and illustrates a basic way to navigate using Google Earth as
your plotting chart. Cygon_Parrot takes things to a more advanced level in Part 2. Cygon
Parrot also developed the Sight Reduction Form app used in Part 2 of the tutorial. We hope
you enjoy the journey ahead of you! Oh, and the obligatory disclaimer, this tutorial is
intended purely for simulator use, not for real world navigation.

Part 2
The Sight Reduction Method that will be described in the following text does not depart from
PaulRix’s description much, except in one major way; you must assume you do not have
Google Earth upon which you can so graphically picture the intersection of three circles
around the GP of the celestial bodies. You must still calculate the geographical positions of
the bodies at the exact time of the sighting. You must still determine the Lines of Position
from the bodies and establish their intersection point, which will be the navigator’s position.
Where it differs is in the procedure. Before we dive in, however, there are a few precepts that
must be acknowledged and understood, or the task will undoubtedly seem daunting and long
winded.

First and foremost, the planning of the flight itself must be meticulous. Celestial Navigation,
with this method, is a position confirmation exercise. You should already have a dead
reckoning navigation plan, including as many en-route known or forecast conditions as
possible, and know your aircraft’s performance.

We will need some resources. As before, we require a current Nautical Almanac. We will
also need two specific documents, the Sight Reduction Form (SRF) and the Universal
Plotting Sheet (UPS). For absolute purists, we will need the HO-229 publication. Finally, we
must have at hand a ruler, dividers, and a pencil. A scientific calculator, although
anachronistic, could also be helpful.

The Nautical Almanac has already been amply described, so let us move on to take an
introductory look at the Sight Reduction Form.
This is the form where all the calculations take place. It is divided into four sections, the
elements of each which will be described. It is worth noting that the last section, Determining
a Line of Position, assumes use of the HO-229 publication for looking up the Computed
Altitude of the body (Hc) and the Azimuth Angle (Z). There is a mathematical way to short
cut the HO-229, it should be noted. We will see that, too, soon enough.

Before we start an explanation of the SRF I do want to mention, for those eager to get straight
to navigating by the stars, that I developed a small application for Windows of a semi-
automated SRF in Visual Basic. It will start the new celestial navigator on the road of
rediscovery with relative ease, but I do advise becoming familiar with the calculations of the
manual SRF, just the same. Find the instructions for that application after the description of
the manual SRF procedure.

The Universal Plotting Sheet is nothing more than a blank segment of a chart, if you will,
with no features, but with three evenly spaced parallels and one central meridian. Note that
their value (Eg; N45°) is not included, and must be manually added, according to your dead
reckoning position. It should now be obvious why you need to have a dead reckoning flight
plan.

The Sheet omits including any additional meridians because of their tendency to converge
towards the poles. The small legend in the lower right corner is used to determine the exact
value of the distance between meridians at the corresponding parallel, using the dividers. As
the navigator, it is your job to pencil in the two lateral meridians at the correct separation. An
Assumed Position for each star sighting will then be penciled in, and from it the Line of
Position drawn in. The intersection of these LOPs will pinpoint your location at the time of
the sightings.

We will now take a quick look at the HO-229 publication. Here is one example page.
This publication comes in six large volumes. Its purpose is solely to provide the navigator
with precomputed, tabulated spherical trigonometry calculation solutions. This was all from
the time before there was even a pocket scientific calculator, of course. Wading through these
sizable volumes to extract just three numbers was then more efficient than the navigator
sitting at his table with sine and cosine charts and doing the formulae manually. Now, with a
calculator, it is a breeze, and the HO-229 can all but be done away with. However, more for
historical interest than anything else, I include the description of it.
In short, you select which volume you need of the HO-229 based on your Assumed Position
latitude. Then, with reference to your Local Hour Angle (LHA), you find the applicable page
(look at top and bottom right of the example). You would then establish if the sighting
Declination is in the same or in the contrary hemisphere to your Assumed Position latitude.
Finally, you use the value of your sighting’s Declination, on the column of your Assumed
Position latitude, to find; the Computed Declination (Hc), the Computed Declination
correction (d), and the Azimuth Angle (Z). These values then get written into the last section
(IV) of the SRF, for some additional corrections. From that, you will have obtained the
corrected distance from the Assumed Position, along a calculated Azimuth, which is then
drawn onto the UPS to establish the LOP.

I am aware that the HO-229 is a very tall order for starting out. For that reason, I will base the
description of filling in an SRF using the formulae found in the Nautical Almanac, for the
main part, and using the VB SRF application (which makes it very easy).

That concludes the introduction. We can now move on to the description of how the SRF is
filled in. Once again, for those impatient to start, skip forward to the Plotting Sheet section, to
obtain an understanding of how it is used, and then on to the Sight Reduction Form Tutorial,
for hands on navigating with the VB SRF application.

Filling in the Sight Reduction Form

Section I: Observations and Corrections

Because we will be using Stellarium with Casper’s application in this example, some of the
entries are redundant on the Form. We will look at them briefly, just the same.

Item 1. Simple, the name of the body you are using as reference.

Item 2. For our purposes, it suffices to write in the reading of the Altitude you obtain from
Stellarium into the Sextant Altitude box. Do take note of the approximate direction we are
looking, while we are doing this (in this example, NW). It will help us later.
Note that I have converted it from (degrees/minutes/seconds) to (degrees/decimal minutes)
format, and rounded to one decimal place (27’ 19.1” = 27.3’). This is the format of the
Nautical Almanac.

The Index correction is a mechanical error that can affect sextants. It is particular to each
particular sextant, and as its owner you would know it and add or subtract it from every
reading you take with that sextant. It is not applicable to Stellarium.

Dip is a correction of eye height above the ground. Simply put, as the planet is spherical, the
higher you are, the more you see over the horizon, and thus need to correct for in celestial
calculations. Casper’s application eliminates the need to calculate this, as eye height is
always zero. However, if it were applicable, you may calculate it with this formula…

Dip = 0.97 x Square root( eye height in feet )

The result should be subtracted from the sextant reading, so simply express that answer as a
negative for the purposes of the Form.

Item 3. The main concern here, for the purposes of Stellarium, is the Altitude Correction. It is
a correction for atmospheric refraction, which affects a sighting progressively more the closer
to the horizon the celestial body is (because there is more slant distance through the
atmosphere), from the observer’s view point. For it to work, in Stellarium, you must have the
atmosphere set on. You can obtain the value from the Nautical Almanac, as described earlier
by PaulRix, or you can use one of a couple of formulae to compute it. I will include them
here.

For sightings that are higher than 8° above the horizon, a simpler formula can be used.
Normally, this one will suffice for most sightings because you ideally want to select bodies
that are between 20° to 75° degrees above the horizon for your sightings…

Altitude Correction = 0.96 x Tangent( Total Apparent Altitude )

Do note, you must convert the Apparent Altitude to decimal degrees for this to work. In our
specific example, 33° 27.3 = 33.455°

If you simply must take a sighting of a body that is less than 8° above the horizon, then the
following formula should be used (which incidentally calculates with slightly more precision
for any sighting, including those above 8° from the horizon)…

Altitude Correction = Cotangent( Apparent Altitude + ( 7.31 / ( Apparent Altitude + 4.4 ) ) )

For those wondering, in order to express a cotangent on your calculator, consider that it is the
reciprocal of a tangent (ie; 1 / Tangent).

The Additional Atmospheric correction is not significant for use with Stellarium. The
Additional Corrections for Mars and Venus, which are very small and are seasonal, need to
be obtained from the Nautical Almanac. They are almost insignificant, never exceeding 0.4’
for Mars (between August and September), and 0.2’ for Venus (between January and
February), so they can safely be ignored for these exercises (I have not even been able to
positively determine if the requirement for these corrections are even active in Stellarium,
they are so small, so the process would probably be redundant even if you did perform it).
Therefore, we will safely ignore it.

In the last box we write our final, Total Observed Altitude (Ho).

Section II: Time and Dead Reckoning

Here, we need to have accurately composed and maintained our navigation log. The best way
to do this is to pre-plan a point at which you will take your sightings, calculate your estimated
time at that point, and express the position of that point in latitude and longitude. When you
get to the time when you would be at that expected point, according to your plan, take your
sightings. Universal Time Coordinated (UTC/GMT) must be used for celestial navigation.

Item 4. The date on the Prime Merdian at the time of taking the sighting.

Item 5. The latitude you expect to be upon at sighting time, according to your navigation log.

Item 6. The longitude you expect to be upon at sighting time, according to your navigation
log.

Item 7. The exact time in UTC (GMT) of the sighting, HH:MM:SS.

Section III: Latitude and Longitude

This section starts out reasonably straight forward, but gets a little complicated at points.
Some attention needs to be expended on getting it right. In this section, we will obtain our
Assumed Position , which is a very important piece of information for the Universal Plotting
Sheet. It is worth noting that the Assumed Position is not the same as the Dead Reckoning
Position. It is not even a true “assumed” position, in the technical sense of the word. It is a
calculated reference position that is derived from your Dead Reckoning position with a
process. There is no guess work. Here is the completed section…
I know that looks a little scary. However, each item is its own little process, and is not really
as hard as it appears at first glance. From PaulRix’s earlier description, some of this is already
familiar ground. Let us start.

Item 8. GHA (Greenwich Hour Angle)

Note the date and the time. Locate the page in the Nautical Almanac for that date October
25th, in this case.

Move down the column for the UTC time, in hours, 16 for our example.

Then, move directly across to read the value of the GHA for Aries.

The result is 273° 45.0’. Write that into the first box.

Now, on the same page, you will find the SHA for the chosen star (Markab) on the given
date.
The result is 13° 33.8’. Write that into the third box for Item 8.

Now we need the minutes and seconds increment. We have 10 minutes with 50 seconds past
the hour. Proceed in the Nautical Almanac to the Increments and Corrections pages, and find
the table for minute 10.

This is a segment of that page. The first column represents the seconds, and the third column
is the increment value for Aries. That is what we want.

The result is 2° 42.9’. Write that into the second box.

Add all those values together, and write the answer into the fourth box.

273° 45.0’

2° 42.9’

+ 13° 33.8’

290° 01.7’

This represents the total meridian angle westward from the Prime Meridian for the star’s GP.

Item 9. LHA (Local Hour Angle)

Assumed Position Longitude

Now that we know how “far” west from the Prime Meridian the star’s GP is, we need to
calculate how far we are, in terms of degrees, from the star’s GP, based on an Assumed
Position. Again, this is measured west, from our Assumed Longitude to the star’s meridian. It
is known as the Local Hour Angle.

The first thing we need to do, therefore, is establish our Assumed Latitude. It is essentially a
“mix” of the Dead Reckoning Longitude degrees with the GHA minutes. Here is a simple
example…

DR Lon = W 132° 41.5’

GHA = 87° 23.8’

Assumed Lon = 132° 23.8’

See how that works? Simple, right? But there is a small catch. Note that the DR Lon in the
above example is in the western hemisphere, for which that calculation is correct. If your DR
Lon is in the eastern hemisphere, then the minutes need to be “inverted”. This is because,
going west about, minutes in the eastern hemisphere count down. So, you must subtract the
GHA minutes from 60 when in the eastern hemisphere to get minutes for the Assumed Lon.
Here is another example…

DR Lon = E 113° 30.0

GHA = 290° 01.7’

Minute Correction = 60’ – 01.7’ = 58.3’

Assumed Lon = 113° 58.3’

Whichever case applies, do the procedure and write the answer in the first box of Item 9.

Local Hour Angle

We may now start computing our Local Hour Angle. We have already stated that LHA is our
angle to the star’s GP. How we calculate it depends on whether we are east or west of the
Prime Meridian, as the GP is measured from this reference.

If the observer is in the western hemisphere , the value of the Assumed Longitude must be
subtracted from the GHA to obtain LHA. If the observer is in the eastern hemisphere , the
value of the Assumed Longitude must be added to the GHA to obtain LHA.

That is reasonably straight forward. Now we must consider another detail. LHA must be
expressed in whole degrees, not considering minutes. Therefore, before we add or subtract
the Assumed Lon to or from the GHA, as the case may be, we need to round both to the
nearest degree, then perform the operation. For example…

GHA = 217° 47.2’ = 218°

Assumed Lon = W 28° 13.9’ = W 28° (note west, so subtract from GHA)

LHA = 218° – 28° = 90°

It is not ridiculously difficult. Here is a graphic to clarify LHA (consider all angles measured
clockwise)…
Now, there may (often) be cases when LHA is greater than 360° or less than 0°, once the
operation is done. When this happens, simply correct the LHA value by subtracting 360°
from it or adding 360° to it, respectively. Write the result into the last box of Item 9.

That is all there is to it, and there is no need to expand anymore about LHA. Applying all that
has been outlined above, with some additional self-practice, should answer any questions.

Item 10. Declination.

As we should already be familiar with from PaulRix’s discussion, Declination is simply the
latitude of the celestial body’s Ground Point. It is found in the Nautical Almanac, on the daily
pages. In fact, you will find it right next to the place where you obtained the SHA, earlier.

See it there, on the Markab row? 15° 18.8’. As it is positive, that means it is north latitude.
Negative would be south. Write that value into the first box of item 10. For stars, that would
be all you need to do. There is no “d” correction to be applied for stars, so a zero would go
into the next box, and the Declination value would be repeated in the last box.

So, you might be asking, what is the “d” correction? Well, it is applied for planets, the Moon,
and the Sun. As the declination of these bodies can change by small amounts, within the
hour, the “d” correction refines it, and should be added to the base declination to give Total
Declination. There is a bit of a process for it. Here is an example for the Sun.

This is part of a daily Nautical Almanac page, in the Sun columns.

The first column is the UTC hour. The second column is the base GHA at that hour. The third
column is the Declination at that hour. At the bottom, under the Declination column, you see
d=0.7. That is the “d” correction factor, and you would write on the corresponding line on the
SRF, to the right of the Declination (not in the box).

Now, you would go to the increments and corrections pages of the Nautical Almanac. Let us
say we are at minute 27, for example. Here is a section of the table…

Under “v and d corr”, find 0.7. Right next to it, you will see the number 0.3. That is what
goes in the box under Declination on the form. Now, to know if you add this correction or
subtract it, look at the trend of the Declination for the Sun on the daily pages. Note, the value
is increasing as hours progress, which means we add it.

Here is the result, for hour 21, minute 27…

Declination: N 16° 04.2’ d corr factor: 0.7

D Correction: 0.3’

Total Declination: N 16° 04.5’

Item 11. Assumed Latitude

Assumed Latitude, like Assumed Longitude, is derived from your DR Latitude. Very simply,
round to the nearest whole degree, and write that in the box.

S 21° 49.5’ rounds up to S 22°

Now look at the Declination again. If it is in the same hemisphere as your Assumed Latitude,
circle SAME. If it is in the opposite hemisphere, circle CONTRARY.

We are done with this section.

Section IV: Determining a Line of Position

This is the main operation of the Sight reduction. Here, we will obtain two pieces of key
information;

The “Distance”, called “Intercept” on the Form, expressed in degrees and minutes, to correct
our Assumed Position, and…

The “Azimuth” (Zn), and angle along which we will apply the correction distance.

How exactly we apply them once we have them is not important, yet. At the moment, we
must concentrate on obtaining them. As mentioned before, there are two ways to accomplish
this goal; look up tables in the HO-229 publication, and a mathematical (trigonometrical)
way. We will do the latter way. Here is the completed section of the Form…

Item 12. Computed Altitude

The Computed Altitude (Hc) is essentially similar to the reading you took with your sextant,
with one major difference. Instead of physically looking at the celestial body with an
instrument, you use the positional information you have to determine where (ie; at what
altitude) that body would appear, by rights, if that positional information were correct. You
compare this to your real sighting (Ho) to determine an “error”, which is used to correct your
assumed position. Look up on your Form and gather the following information for this step:

Declination, Assumed Latitude, LHA , and whether the hemisphere is SAME or

CONTRARY .
For this example, we have the following (covert Declination to decimal)…

Declination = N 15° 18.8’ = N 15.313°

Assumed Latitude = S 22° CONTRARY

LHA = 44°

Note, if CONTRARY , express the Declination as a negative number. In this case it is, so
Declination’s final value for the calculation is -15.313° .

Now, here is the formula, followed by the solution for our example (use your scientific
calculator with angles set to degrees, not radians, or you will have to do yet another
conversion!):

Hc = ArcSin( Sin( Dec ) x Sin( A Lat ) + Cos( A Lat ) x Cos( Dec ) x Cos( LHA ) )

Hc = ArcSin( Sin( -15.313 ) x Sin( 22 ) + Cos( 22 ) x Cos( Dec ) x Cos( 44 ) )

Hc = 32.98° (make a note of this decimal value, we will need it again in a moment)

Convert that decimal to minutes ( 0.98 x 60 = 58.8 ), and we have our final Hc…

Hc = 32° 58.8’

Is that not thoroughly cool? Write that into the first box of Item 12.

As the calculation with the formula is exact for its purposes, we do not need to do any further
corrections. If we were using the HO-229 lookup tables, we would, but we will see that later.
For now, just write zero into the second box, and repeat our result in the third box, for Total
Hc.

Item 13: Intercept Altitude

Take a look at your Ho (Total Observed Altitude) and Hc (Total Computed Altitude). The
lesser one must be subtracted from the greater one, to obtain our correction (Intercept
Altitude). Write the greater one into the first box, the lesser in the second, perform the
operation, and write the result into the third box of Item 13.

0° 27’ is the value we obtained from that operation.

Now, consider this: HoMoTo. If Ho is “more” than Hc, then the correction is TOWARDS. If
not, then the correction is AWAY. Circle the appropriate T or A, and keep that in mind.

Item 14: Azimuth Angle

Azimuth Angle (Z) is another piece of information we would normally obtain from the HO-
229 publication look up tables. Like in Item 12, there is an alternate, mathematical method to
obtain the required value, which we will be employing here. Apart from the values we used in
the previous formula, we will also need our newly computed Hc, in decimal. Here is the
formula, and solution…

Azimuth Angle = ArcCos( ( Sin( Dec ) – Sin( A Lat ) x Sin( Hc ) ) / ( Cos( A Lat ) x
Cos( Hc ) ) )

Azimuth Angle = ArcCos( ( Sin( -15.313 ) – Sin( 22 ) x Sin( 32.98 ) ) / ( Cos( 22 ) x

Cos( 32.98 ) ) )

Azimuth Angle = 127.0°

Item 15: Azimuth

Unfortunately, Z is not the end of the story, and some corrections for hemisphere and LHA
must be performed before we can use the Azimuth. Not going too deep into the matter, it has
to do with trigonometry’s tendency for only dealing effectively with one quadrant in positive
values, and leaving the reasoning of the other three to the particular case, which is what we
are doing here.

You need to look at your LHA again, and your Assumed Latitude hemisphere. Here are the
rules (you can see them on the Form, too)…

North Hemisphere Assumed Latitude:

LHA > 180, then no modification of the Azimuth Angle (Z) is needed to obtain Azimuth (Zn)

LHA < 180, subtract Z from 360.

South Hemisphere Assumed Latitude:

LHA > 180, subtract Z from 180.

LHA < 180, add Z to 180.

Write the result into the Azimuth box. In our case, our Assumed Latitude is SOUTH 22, and
the LHA is 44. Therefore, the solution is;

Zn = 180 + 127 = 307°

Phew, we are done with the Form. No doubt there is a feeling of great accomplishment. This
is good, because now you need to go through it again. Twice. This gives you the chance to
get that wonderful feeling again, and yet again! Yes, you need to perform the sight reduction
for at least three celestial bodies, as PaulRix has already described, to obtain an accurate fix.
We now understand why there was a specific requirement for a navigator crew member on
flight crews of old, right?

In any case, we can now get down to the real objective; plotting. Print out a Universal
Plotting Sheet, get your ruler and dividers, and let us get to it!

Plotting a Line of Position on the Universal Plotting Sheet

Before anything, we must prepare our UPS. The three represented parallels are not identified.
It does not include any meridians, except the central one, also not identified. Meridians
converge onto the Geographic Poles, so depending on which parallel we are upon, the
distance between them will vary, up to a maximum of 60 nautical miles on the equator. For
those interested, the distance between meridians at a given latitude is equal to the cosine of
that particular latitude. But it need not be that academic; the little legend in the lower right
corner is there to help us.

Start by identifying the parallels on the Sheet. Our rounded DR Latitude rounds to S 22°.
Make that the central parallel. The parallel above it, closer to the equator, will be S 21°, and
the lower one will be S 23°.

Write that in on the Sheet, as seen in the image.

On the legend in the lower right corner, draw a line across it at 22°. Then use your dividers to
set the total span distance of the scale along that line. This is the scale spacing between
meridians, at that latitude.
With your dividers set, mark a point at this span along the parallels, either side, from the
central meridian, both top and bottom. Join these marks vertically drawing a line with a ruler.
The meridian on the left will be E 113°, and the one on the right will be E 115°. Remember to
take into account hemispheres to ascertain in which sense the numbers ascend.

Now we must draw in our computed Assumed Position. It will help to gather the information
you will need for plotting on the Sheet, somewhere where it is unobtrusive. You will want;
the Celestial Body’s name, the Assumed Position, the Azimuth (Zn), the Intercept Altitude,
and the direction of intercept.
This is our Assumed Position, from the Sight Reduction Form: S 22° 0.0’, E 113° 58.3’.

We want to mark that on the plotting sheet. Use the scale again, on our line, to set the
dividers to 58.3’, as in the first image below. Then move the dividers to the 113° meridian,
and mark the point 58.3’ along our reference S 22° parallel. Draw a small circle at this point,
and label it AP57. 57 is the number of the particular star we are using, Markab. That is it. Our
reference Assumed Position is established.
Using whatever method you prefer (protractor, or the scale around the circle), centered from
the AP, draw a line through the AP on a bearing of 307°, which is our Azimuth (Zn), from
the SRF.
Note, it is important that this angle be from the center of the AP, not the middle of the chart.
If you look closely at the picture, you will see that I did draw a faint line through the
intersection of the central parallel and meridian, out on a 307° bearing. This was only to help
me draw a line through the AP (the heavier line), keeping it equidistant from the reference.

At the end of this “Intercept Line” (Azimuth) that points towards the celestial body, draw an
arrow head and the ID of the body, to disambiguate it.

Finally, we can draw our Line of Position. Take note of our Intercept Altitude, 0° 27.0’. Set
your dividers to this value on the index marks on the central meridian. Consider if the
Intercept was Towards or Away from the celestial body, as noted on your SRF. In this
example, it is Towards, so from the center of the AP, mark a point 27’ long up the Azimuth
line, towards the body.
Perpendicular to the Azimuth line, at the marked point, draw another line, and label it LOP,
and identify it with the body and the time of the sighting.
Essentially, this LOP is the periphery of the circle PaulRix showed us in his description, the
only difference here being that we calculated it with a procedure on the SRF, instead of using
Google Earth.

We must now repeat that process, on the same UPS, for the other two sightings.

Where the three LOPs are at their closest to intersection point will be our celestially
computed position, at the time of the sightings. If the process was done correctly, it should be
quite accurate. We could then add our DR position on the Sheet, to see how far off course we
were.

Sight Reduction Form Application Tutorial

The SRF application will do a large amount of the work described above automatically, while
still not detracting from the experience of reading the Almanac or taking the sighting of
celestial bodies. It will not eliminate errors of readings taken either from Stellarium or the
Almanac, nor will it advise or correct you if you are making a mistake, so the same care must
be taken in these procedures as would be if you were using the manual form. This way, it still
leaves open the challenge of celestial navigation, but reduces time with the mathematical
computations. You will still also have the joy of plotting your position on the UPS, with the
data that this form provides from a successful sighting.

Here is the application interface, and a brief description of its features.

As can be appreciated, the format is almost identical to the SRF form described in the
previous chapter. There is some color coding to take note of. White boxes are user inputs.
Yellow boxes are computed information. Green boxes are computed information which is
specifically used when plotting the LOP on the UPS.

In Section I, the celestial body and its altitude are set. The body name is selected from the
drop down list. Selection of the body will configure the rest of the form to accept the required
parameters from the Nautical Almanac. The selection of the Apparent Altitude is in degrees,
minutes, and decimals of minutes. The yellow box below is a repeater in degrees, minutes
and seconds, to better equate the value to the Apparent Altitude value in Stellarium.

In Section II, the most important information to enter correctly is the DR position. Be sure to
click the appropriate radio buttons for N/S, W/E. Date and time do not have any function in
computations, but are included for your reference.

In Section III, data from the Nautical Almanac must be input. Total GHA, Assumed
Longitude, and LHA are computed values. The Declination must be input for the appropriate
body, from the Nautical Almanac, and again, be sure to click the correct N/S radio button.

In Section IV, the data for calculation of the LOP will be presented automatically, once the
“Execute Calculation” button is clicked. Data can be edited in the user input boxes, and the
calculation re-executed, or the form can be reset to default values for a fresh start by clicking
“Reset Form”.

There are a few points of caution to be observed, when using Stellarium along with the SRF
Application for XP flights, to avoid some gross errors.

In Stellarium, always make sure the Atmosphere option is set to ON. The SRF corrects the
Ho (Observed Altitude) for the effects of atmospheric refraction. Stellarium simulates this
effect with reasonable accuracy. The closer a body is to the horizon, the more distortive effect
refraction will have on the sighting. Sensibly, one would normally try to take sightings of
bodies that are more than 20° above the horizon to try and reduce this distortion to a
minimum (despite the correction), but if it becomes necessary to take a low sighting, having
the Atmosphere option OFF will quite seriously affect results of the final LOP.

Set Stellarium’s Time Zone to UTC (GMT), so that it actually displays UTC as the current
time on the Date Time bar. It is not essential, but it certainly helps to have the correct
reference for the Nautical Almanac already at hand.

The SRF Application can be opened as multiple, independent instances. For practical
purposes, while navigating, open three separate SRF apps, and perform the sightings for the
separate celestial bodies in these. It is preferable to do this than to just open one, and
sequentially perform the sightings on that single form.
Determining a Three Star Celestial Fix with the SRF Application

The following example shows how three stars will be used to establish position. For
reference, the date is the 23 February, 2020, and we are on our way, eastbound, to
Madagascar. The DR Navigation Log should establish way points as positions in latitude and
longitude, and have an estimated time in UTC for that point.
Fairly self-explanatory. We estimate to be at position S 22° 03.4’ E 040° 04.7’ at GMT time
20:48. We have no other way of establishing our true position in relation to our planned
position except by time. Therefore, at 20:48 GMT we will start taking our sightings, which
will consist of measuring and recording the altitude of three stars. These stars will be;
Regulus (26), Gacrux (31), and Sirius (18).

The sighting and recording will take several seconds each (20 seconds, for instance), so for
the Almanac reading, we will use the times in this example as; Regulus – 20:48:20 GMT,
Gacrux – 20:48:40 GMT, and Sirius – 20:49:00 GMT.

Here they are…

Regulus, at 20:48:20. Apparent Altitude 55° 23’ 03.2”

Armed with this information, we are done with using Stellarium for the rest of the procedure.
Now, we may now open three instances of the SRF Application, and enter what data we
already have. It might come as a surprise that you already have a good portion of the
information to complete the Form, without having looked at the Almanac, yet. Let us take
stock.
For starters, you have the names of the stars, and each one’s Ha (Apparent Altitude). You
have the date and time. And you have the DR position, from your navigation log. Here is a
shot of the three Forms, completed up to this point…

Note how you can use the Apparent Altitude Ha (D:M:S) automatic box to get as close to the
Stellarium reading as possible. The Nautical Almanac uses the format degrees, minutes and
decimal minutes, so this feature helps you “round to the nearest second” without having to
resort to using a calculator. The DR position should be the same for all the Forms. Again,
make sure the hemisphere radio buttons for latitude and longitude are correctly selected, S
and E in this case, on all the Forms. Sections I and II are complete.

Now we may turn to the Nautical Almanac, making sure it is the correct publication for the
year 2020, and fill in Section III. As we are dealing with the same hour (20 GMT), the
Tabulated GHA will be identical for all the Forms. Let us find it…
We are interested in the Aries column, for Sunday 23 February, hour 20 GMT. The result is:
93° 10.7’ . That value should be input to the Tabulated GHA boxes on all three Forms.

We may now look up the SHA and the Declination for each of our stars, which is on the same
page of the Nautical Almanac, in the STARS information box. Obtain the following
information from it, and enter it on each of the Forms, for the respective stars. For
Declination, please note, positive numbers are North Hemisphere, negative numbers South
Hemisphere.
Regulus:

SHA 207° 38.2’ , DEC (N) 11° 52.1’

Gacrux:

SHA 171° 55.4’ , DEC (S) 57° 13.3’

Sirius:

SHA 258° 29.3’ , DEC (S) 16° 44.7’

Your Forms should now look like this…

There is but one last piece of information to input, now, before we can hit Execute
Calculation; the increments. In the Nautical Almanac, turn to the page corresponding to the
tables for Increments and Corrections, for Minutes 48 and 49. Here it is…
We are interested in the Aries column, again, for the minutes and seconds of our sightings, as
follows;

Regulus at 48 minutes, 20 seconds = 12° 07.0’

Gacrux at 48 minutes, 40 seconds = 12° 12.0’

Sirius at 49 minutes, 0 seconds = 12° 17.0’

Input those values into the GHA Increment boxes on the Forms, respectively, for each star.

You may now hit Execute Calculation on each Form, to compute all the data. They should
look like this…
Note that once all the data has been computed, the Execute Calculation button becomes grey.
This is to show you that the calculation for the currently entered data is valid. If you change
any value in any of the user input boxes after a calculation has been performed, the Execute
Calculation button will turn yellow again, to indicate that a recalculation is necessary.

You now have all you will need to do the fun part; plotting your LOPs onto the UPS. The
data you need for plotting is in the green boxes: Assumed Longitude and Assumed Latitude,
The Intercept Distance, and the Azimuth (Zn). Write the data down for each star, mark up
your UPS, and plot away!

Once done, you should have something like this…

For clarity, I did some coding on this image so it can be better interpreted.

Dotted Lines are the Azimuth (Zn), with arrows showing the TOWARD direction. Solid lines
are the LOPs, at 90° to the Azimuth line. The star color coding is self-explanatory. Assumed
Positions are solid circles. The orange and black square is the navigation log DR position.
The black diamond is the Celestial Fix, at the intersection of the three LOPs. Note that in this
example all the distance directions were AWAY, so all LOPs intersect the Azimuth line the
far side (away from the arrow) of the Assumed Position, for each star.

If you take this a bit further, you can interpret that the aircraft was slightly ahead of plan, and
slightly south of desired track.

The real position of the aircraft in X-Plane, at the time of this sighting set, was S 22° 05.3’ E
40° 9.8’, so the Celestial Fix, in this case, was accurate to approximately 1 nautical mile.

Determining Position from the Sun

Now, something easy. We are going to use Stellarium to establish our approximate position
using an adaptation of the age old method of the Noon Sighting. This method can only be
used at a very specific moment, and can only be performed once in each 24 hour cycle for the
given celestial body (so do not miss the opportunity!).

First, a brief description of the original method, used by sailors before the invention of the
accurate Marine Chronometer, in 1761. Without an accurate time piece, it is impossible to
establish a position relative to longitude, but it is possible to determine latitude. Here is how.

As the Sun travels through the sky (from our point of view), we see its angle (altitude)
relative to the horizon change. It starts close to the eastern horizon in the morning, rises to its
highest elevation at midday, and settles to the western horizon in the evening. The navigator
must catch it, and take the altitude reading with the sextant, at precisely the highest elevation.
It stands to reason that this moment coincides with the exact moment the Sun crosses your
meridian.

Then, a simple formula is used to determine the observer’s latitude. As the Sun’s Declination
is known (and published in the Nautical Almanac), and its angular distance from the point
directly above our head (Zenith) can be computed, we will have enough information to
determine our own latitude.

Let us say we are in the northern hemisphere, the date is the 27 February, 2020, and we
observe the Sun’s highest (Noon) elevation at 47°, with the sextant. Here is a shot of that
situation…

Note, in this relative position the Sun will coincide with your own specific meridian. Exactly
which one it is in relation to the globe’s lines of longitude, we do not know, for now. As we
are in the Northern Hemisphere, probably north of the Tropic of Cancer, we have to look
south to measure the altitude of the Sun at an angle less than our Zenith. This consideration is
important.
Now, how far away is the Sun from our Zenith? Well, as our Zenith is 90° from the horizon
(of course), and the Sun is 47° above the horizon, the additional angle the Sun would need to
be over our directly over our heads would be;

90° – 47° = 43°

43°. That is called our Zenith Distance. Keep that number in mind. Now, break out the
Nautical Almanac and find the page for the 27 February, 2020, Sun columns.

Here it is.

Now, note that the Sun has a variable Declination through the 24 hour cycle. This is
reasonably obvious, or else we would not have seasons. To get precise data, we would need
our timepiece, once again. There will be more, regarding this “feature” of the Sun.

For now, we are going to pretend we are in 1760, or prior to. There would have been a “daily
average” Declination (if sailor-navigators of olde could not establish an exact time, they
could, at least, establish a date). Let us say the daily average for the 27 February might be S
08° 27’.

So, we now know the approximate latitude the sun is over (Declination), and we know how
far from being over the tops of our heads it is (Zenith), too.
The Sun is 8° 27’ into the opposite hemisphere, so if we subtract that from our Zenith
Distance, we will have our latitude.

N 43° – S 8° 27’ = N 34° 33’

And there it is. Our approximate latitude, give or take 10 minutes of arc. Very simple.

Let us get a little more in depth, now, as we abhor the concept of “very simple”. Flash
forwards to the year 2020 again. We have an excellent, accurate time piece available. We can
now determine that the time at the precise moment of the image of the Sun at its highest
altitude is 20:38:43 GMT. We can also determine the exact Declination and the longitude of
the Sun at that time. Here is how.

Look at the table above once more, and extract the GHA and Declination for hour 20;

GHA 116° 48.8’

Dec S 08° 18.7’

Also, take note of the value for “d” at the foot of the table, where it states d=0.9. Finally, take
note if the Declination is increasing or decreasing after hour 20. As the minute value changes
from 18.7 to 17.7 from 20 to 21 hours, we conclude that the Declination is decreasing .

In the Nautical Almanac, find the Increments and Corrections table for minute 38.

Scan down the first column to the 43 second. Under the next column (Sun Plan.), extract the
GHA Increment of 9° 40.8’. Add this to the original, tabulated GHA for the hour.

9° 40.8 + 116° 48.8’ = 126° 29.6’

As that is less than 180°, it presents us with the longitude of the Sun, west, on the globe at
that precise time. As we are right on the same meridian as the Sun, it also happens to be our
own position in longitude.

Now, move across to the v and d corr column. Remembering the d value obtained from the
previous table, which was 0.9, we locate 0.9 in the table, and index the number alongside it.
In this case, that number is 0.6.

Previously, we had determined that the Declination was decreasing, so that 0.6 needs to be
subtracted from the table Declination, which was S 08° 18.7’.

S 08° 18.7’ – 0.6’ = S 08° 18.1’

This is the exact Declination of the Sun at the given time, which is slightly more accurate
than the “daily average” method. We can now do the same procedure of subtracting it from
our Zenith Distance of 43° 00.0’, to obtain our precise latitude position.
N 43° 00.0’ – S 8° 18.1’ = N 34° 41.9’

So, our position according to this method is:

N 34 41.9’ W 126° 29.6’

Let us see where Stellarium says we are…

…which is not all that bad, for a quick and dirty determination of position off a single body.
It has nowhere near the accuracy of a proper, triangulated Celestial Fix, determined with a
Sight Reduction, but it will certainly put you in the ball park of where you are, if you are lost.

Now that we have seen that it works, it is time to bear in mind a couple of additional points
regarding the Zenith Distance to latitude calculation. In the example, the Sun was in the
opposite hemisphere from us. There are two other cases. We can be in the same hemisphere
as the Sun, but closer to the equator than the Declination of the Sun, or we can also be in the
same hemisphere as the Sun, but with the Sun closer to the equator. Here are the pertinent
operations, straight from the Nautical Almanac.

Indeed, you may use this exact same method of single body sighting with stars, the Moon, or
planets, as well. Provided that you wait for the selected body to be at the highest altitude, you
may reference it in the Nautical Almanac and establish your approximate position. This gives
you 63 opportunities (discount Polaris, it is the only one that is useless for a single body
determination of longitude) in a 24 hour cycle.

Finally, Planets!

Now that we have studied all of this, let us have a look at using planets and the Moon as valid
navigational celestial bodies, using the SRF Application. They have a slightly different
method of calculation to stars, though it is similar.
The scenario. We are using Mars as one of our bodies, on 3 March, 2020, at 23:32:15 GMT.
Our DR position is N 15° 04.9’ E 089° 30.5’. Here is the sighting…

The Apparent Altitude of Mars is 36° 45.6’. Let us fill in the Form with this data. Then,
reference the Nautical Almanac as per normal, to obtain the Tabulated GHA and Declination
for Mars. Note the values of the v and d, at the bottom of the table. Also note, Declination
increasing or decreasing.
The Form will look like this…

All our preliminary information is in there. We now need to go to the Increments and
Corrections section of the Nautical Almanac, for minute 32.

But before we do, let us look closely at the Form. When Mars (or any of the four planets, or
the Moon, is selected), the SHA is replaced by the V Correction, and under Declination
appears the D correction.
The D Correction we have already seen in action while performing the Sun Noon sighting. To
recap, we will look at it again. The V Correction is essentially the same procedure, but bear
the following in mind.

D correction corrects Declination, and whether it is subtracted or added to the Declination

depends on the trend of change. If The Declination is decreasing, the D Correction will be
subtracted, and vice versa. In this case, it was decreasing .

The V Correction, on the other hand, is always added to the GHA.

Now, let us proceed to the respective Increments and Corrections page, for minute 32.

Here is the table…

For minute 32, move down to second 15, and obtain the Increment for Sun Planets, in this
case:

8° 03.8’

That will go into the GHA Increment box on the Form.

Now, remember the v and d values from the table:

v = 0.6

d = 0.1
Look up both in the v and d corr column in the table. Retrieve the number next to the values,
in this case v (red) is 0.3, and d (blue) is 0.1.

Enter all of these values into the respective boxes on the SRF Form. Note that as Declination
was decreasing, d correction must be subtracted, so enter a negative value (-0.1). Hit Execute
Calculation to get your plotting data for the UPS. Here is what we get…

Plot it the exact same way you would a star on the UPS, as from this point.

The procedure for the Moon is identical to the planets, so there is no need to provide a
separate example.