 Alan Denham 2013 www.allaboutsailing.co.uk email: alan_denham@talk21.

com

Determining Latitude using Polaris (the Pole Star)

Most of us are aware of the significance of the Pole Star (North Star), correctly called Polaris.
It sits over the North Pole, on the axis of the earth. In the Northern hemisphere we are very lucky, as
it will always shows us where true north is (providing the sky is clear!)

But there is more to Polaris than showing us north. Consider the diagram below;

Imagine we are standing on the North Pole. The Pole star is directly above our heads, our icy horizon
disappearing away all around. Imagine we have brought our sextant and we measure the angle
between our horizon and the Pole Star, what angle will it give? Hopefully it is fairly obvious that the
  Alan Denham 2013 www.allaboutsailing.co.uk email: alan_denham@talk21.com

sextant will read 90° as Polaris is right above our head. Now imagine we have jetted off to Ecuador
(or somewhere else on the Equator). Again, we measure the angle between our horizon and the Pole
star. This may not seem so obvious, and diagram may be misleading, but remember the Pole star is
light years away and that all rays of light from it are travelling as parallel lines. Therefore, the Pole
star will be right on the horizon, giving a sextant angle of 0°. Walk one step into the southern
hemisphere and the pole star will disappear from view.

Now, if we are standing at the Equator, what is our Latitude? 0° you say. And if we at the North Pole,
what is out Latitude? 90°N you say. So if I am standing in Falmouth, UK and my sextant reads 50°09’,
what is my Latitude? Hopefully 50°09’ N is your answer.

How cool is that!

So, the Pole star is a very useful celestial object, it has been known of, and used by the ancient
mariners for millennia. It is one of our main traditional methods used to find Latitude.

Now the disappointing bit!

Sadly, earth is not a perfect sphere, the pole star is ‘not’ precisely over the earth’s axis and the earth
‘wobbles’ in its rotation. All this conspires to make the Pole star less handy, however, in an
emergency I would estimate this simple sextant observation would still give your Latitude to an
accuracy of about 30nm.

Now the good news!

In the Nautical Almanac is a special set of
tables for Polaris. By doing a few simple
adjustments we can find our Latitude pretty
accurately.
1st Correction (LHA Aries) As you can see, there are 3 corrections to be
applied. The first a0 is something called LHA
Aries (more of that later), the second and
third corrections (a1 and a2) are self-
explanatory based on your Latitude and the
current Month.
2nd Correction (Lat)

3rd Correction (Month)

When in doubt, read the instructions…!

 Alan Denham 2013 www.allaboutsailing.co.uk email: alan_denham@talk21.com

LHA Aries ()

The LHA of Aries is calculated using something called the GHA Aries which is used in Star
Calculations. (The symbol  denotes Aries). The GHA Aries is found as the first column of the left
hand page of the ‘Daily Pages’ in the Nautical Almanac. The GHA Aries is given hourly for the usual
3 days on the ‘Daily Pages’.

The ‘Daily Pages’ give the GHA for whole hours, but we also need to look at
the back of the Nautical Almanac (Increments and Corrections) to find a
correction for the minutes and seconds of our observation.

Example; Date 31st August, Time 21h 14m 10s

GHA 21h 295° 22.3

14m 10s + 3° 33.1
GHA Aries 298° 55.4

The LHA Aries is the relationship between

GHA Aries and ‘our’ Longitude (by E.P).

The rules are simple;

LHA = GHA – Long (if our Long is West)
LHA = GHA + Long(if our Long is East)

So, imagine our Longitude by E.P is 7° 51’.2 W

LHA = 298°55.4 - 7° 51.2 = 291°04.2 this we can round to 291°

So the first correction using the LHA Aries  of 291° will be 1° 12.4’ (note that the 1° is not shown
on every line)
 Alan Denham 2013 www.allaboutsailing.co.uk email: alan_denham@talk21.com

Polaris worked example

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with these pro-formas and normal Sextant corrections.
It is also assumed that the reader is also familiar with concept of ‘Chosen Longitude’, i.e. massaging our
longitude to make our calculations come out as whole numbers. In this example, we have changed our
Longitude of 007° 51’.2W to 007° 55’.4W so the LHA comes out as a whole number.

On the left are the normal sextant altitude corrections. You will note on the right hand side that 1° is
taken away from this angle before we add our additional corrections; this is as per the instructions
on the Polaris pages in the Nautical Almanac.

As we have seen already, the LHA Aries provides a correction of 1° 12’.4. We now continue on
down the same column to extract;
The second correction is based on our ‘rounded’ Latitude (50°) giving 0.6’.
The third correction is based on month, August giving 0.8’

These corrections are all added to produce the final Latitude of 50° 09’.8 N