Celestial Navigation--enter stellarium

[beasly]

I have been trying to track the stars so that I can teach myself celestial navigation.

Unfortunately, I live near a moderately sized city and we have a lot of trees around; plus I sleep at night.

This star-finder disk wheel thingy I have is ok, but it's really tough for me to map it to the sky.

Short story, I can reliably pick out Cassiopeia, but that's about it

At work I am using Ubuntu and I saw this nifty app: http://www.stellarium.org/

I just got it installed at home, and it is an awesome tool.

 

[granlistillo]

The problem in aviation is the horizon. We've had a few threads on this over the past couple of years you may want to search. For aviation, you will need a bubble sextant and either a periscopic sextant and port or an astrodome ala B-17... Great skill for sailing and one of the most rewarding things I have done in aviation, but alas a dying if not a dead art.

 

[rwgb1984]

The problem in aviation is the horizon. We've had a few threads on this over the past couple of years you may want to search. For aviation, you will need a bubble sextant and either a periscopic sextant and port or an astrodome ala B-17... Great skill for sailing and one of the most rewarding things I have done in aviation, but alas a dying if not a dead art.

You mean that's not somthing I can do with my GPS? ;-)

 

[granlistillo]

What's a GPS?