Nautical Almanac Chronology
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Ephemeris Time, D. H. Sadler, Occasional
EPHEMERIS TIME D. H. Sadler 1. Introduction. – At the eighth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, held in Rome in 1952 September, the following resolution was adopted: “It is recommended that, in all cases where the mean solar second is unsatisfactory as a unit of time by reason of its variability, the unit adopted should be the sidereal year at 1900.0; that the time reckoned in these units be designated “Ephemeris Time”; that the change of mean solar time to ephemeris time be accomplished by the following correction: ΔT = +24°.349 + 72s.318T + 29s.950T2 +1.82144 · B where T is reckoned in Julian centuries from 1900 January 0 Greenwich Mean Noon and B has the meaning given by Spencer Jones in Monthly Notices R.A.S., Vol. 99, 541, 1939; and that the above formula define also the second. No change is contemplated or recommended in the measure of Universal Time, nor in its definition.” The ultimate purpose of this article is to explain, in simple terms, the effect that the adoption of this resolution will have on spherical and dynamical astronomy and, in particular, on the ephemerides in the Nautical Almanac. It should be noted that, in accordance with another I.A.U. resolution, Ephemeris Time (E.T.) will not be introduced into the national ephemerides until 1960. Universal Time (U.T.), previously termed Greenwich Mean Time (G.M.T.), depends both on the rotation of the Earth on its axis and on the revolution of the Earth in its orbit round the Sun. There is now no doubt as to the variability, both short-term and long-term, of the rate of rotation of the Earth; U.T. -
Celestial Navigation Tutorial
NavSoft’s CELESTIAL NAVIGATION TUTORIAL Contents Using a Sextant Altitude 2 The Concept Celestial Navigation Position Lines 3 Sight Calculations and Obtaining a Position 6 Correcting a Sextant Altitude Calculating the Bearing and Distance ABC and Sight Reduction Tables Obtaining a Position Line Combining Position Lines Corrections 10 Index Error Dip Refraction Temperature and Pressure Corrections to Refraction Semi Diameter Augmentation of the Moon’s Semi-Diameter Parallax Reduction of the Moon’s Horizontal Parallax Examples Nautical Almanac Information 14 GHA & LHA Declination Examples Simplifications and Accuracy Methods for Calculating a Position 17 Plane Sailing Mercator Sailing Celestial Navigation and Spherical Trigonometry 19 The PZX Triangle Spherical Formulae Napier’s Rules The Concept of Using a Sextant Altitude Using the altitude of a celestial body is similar to using the altitude of a lighthouse or similar object of known height, to obtain a distance. One object or body provides a distance but the observer can be anywhere on a circle of that radius away from the object. At least two distances/ circles are necessary for a position. (Three avoids ambiguity.) In practice, only that part of the circle near an assumed position would be drawn. Using a Sextant for Celestial Navigation After a few corrections, a sextant gives the true distance of a body if measured on an imaginary sphere surrounding the earth. Using a Nautical Almanac to find the position of the body, the body’s position could be plotted on an appropriate chart and then a circle of the correct radius drawn around it. In practice the circles are usually thousands of miles in radius therefore distances are calculated and compared with an estimate. -
Chapter 19 the Almanacs
CHAPTER 19 THE ALMANACS PURPOSE OF ALMANACS 1900. Introduction The Air Almanac was originally intended for air navigators, but is used today mostly by a segment of the Celestial navigation requires accurate predictions of the maritime community. In general, the information is similar to geographic positions of the celestial bodies observed. These the Nautical Almanac, but is given to a precision of 1' of arc predictions are available from three almanacs published and 1 second of time, at intervals of 10 minutes (values for annually by the United States Naval Observatory and H. M. the Sun and Aries are given to a precision of 0.1'). This Nautical Almanac Office, Royal Greenwich Observatory. publication is suitable for ordinary navigation at sea, but The Astronomical Almanac precisely tabulates celestial lacks the precision of the Nautical Almanac, and provides data for the exacting requirements found in several scientific GHA and declination for only the 57 commonly used fields. Its precision is far greater than that required by navigation stars. celestial navigation. Even if the Astronomical Almanac is The Multi-Year Interactive Computer Almanac used for celestial navigation, it will not necessarily result in (MICA) is a computerized almanac produced by the U.S. more accurate fixes due to the limitations of other aspects of Naval Observatory. This and other web-based calculators are the celestial navigation process. available from: http://aa.usno.navy.mil. The Navy’s The Nautical Almanac contains the astronomical STELLA program, found aboard all seagoing naval vessels, information specifically needed by marine navigators. contains an interactive almanac as well. -
Calculation of Moon Phases and 24 Solar Terms
Calculation of Moon Phases and 24 Solar Terms Yuk Tung Liu (廖²棟) First draft: 2018-10-24, Last major revision: 2021-06-12 Chinese Versions: ³³³qqq---文文文 简简简SSS---文文文 This document explains the method used to compute the times of the moon phases and 24 solar terms. These times are important in the calculation of the Chinese calendar. See this page for an introduction to the 24 solar terms, and this page for an introduction to the Chinese calendar calculation. Computation of accurate times of moon phases and 24 solar terms is complicated, but today all the necessary resources are freely available. Anyone familiar with numerical computation and computer programming can follow the procedure outlined in this document to do the computation. Before stating the procedure, it is useful to have a basic understanding of the basic concepts behind the computation. I assume that readers are already familiar with the important astronomy concepts mentioned on this page. In Section 1, I briefly introduce the barycentric dynamical time (TDB) used in modern ephemerides, and its connection to terrestrial time (TT) and international atomic time (TAI). Readers who are not familiar with general relativity do not have to pay much attention to the formulas there. Section 2 introduces the various coordinate systems used in modern astronomy. Section 3 lists the formulas for computing the IAU 2006/2000A precession and nutation matrices. One important component in the computation of accurate times of moon phases and 24 solar terms is an accurate ephemeris of the Sun and Moon. I use the ephemerides developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the computation. -
The Calendars of India
The Calendars of India By Vinod K. Mishra, Ph.D. 1 Preface. 4 1. Introduction 5 2. Basic Astronomy behind the Calendars 8 2.1 Different Kinds of Days 8 2.2 Different Kinds of Months 9 2.2.1 Synodic Month 9 2.2.2 Sidereal Month 11 2.2.3 Anomalistic Month 12 2.2.4 Draconic Month 13 2.2.5 Tropical Month 15 2.2.6 Other Lunar Periodicities 15 2.3 Different Kinds of Years 16 2.3.1 Lunar Year 17 2.3.2 Tropical Year 18 2.3.3 Siderial Year 19 2.3.4 Anomalistic Year 19 2.4 Precession of Equinoxes 19 2.5 Nutation 21 2.6 Planetary Motions 22 3. Types of Calendars 22 3.1 Lunar Calendar: Structure 23 3.2 Lunar Calendar: Example 24 3.3 Solar Calendar: Structure 26 3.4 Solar Calendar: Examples 27 3.4.1 Julian Calendar 27 3.4.2 Gregorian Calendar 28 3.4.3 Pre-Islamic Egyptian Calendar 30 3.4.4 Iranian Calendar 31 3.5 Lunisolar calendars: Structure 32 3.5.1 Method of Cycles 32 3.5.2 Improvements over Metonic Cycle 34 3.5.3 A Mathematical Model for Intercalation 34 3.5.3 Intercalation in India 35 3.6 Lunisolar Calendars: Examples 36 3.6.1 Chinese Lunisolar Year 36 3.6.2 Pre-Christian Greek Lunisolar Year 37 3.6.3 Jewish Lunisolar Year 38 3.7 Non-Astronomical Calendars 38 4. Indian Calendars 42 4.1 Traditional (Siderial Solar) 42 4.2 National Reformed (Tropical Solar) 49 4.3 The Nānakshāhī Calendar (Tropical Solar) 51 4.5 Traditional Lunisolar Year 52 4.5 Traditional Lunisolar Year (vaisnava) 58 5. -
Astronomical Time Keeping file:///Media/TOSHIBA/Times.Htm
Astronomical Time Keeping file:///media/TOSHIBA/times.htm Astronomical Time Keeping Introduction Siderial Time Solar Time Universal Time (UT), Greenwich Time Timezones Atomic Time Ephemeris Time, Dynamical Time Scales (TDT, TDB) Julian Day Numbers Astronomical Calendars References Introduction: Time keeping and construction of calendars are among the oldest branches of astronomy. Up until very recently, no earth-bound method of time keeping could match the accuracy of time determinations derived from observations of the sun and the planets. All the time units that appear natural to man are caused by astronomical phenomena: The year by Earth's orbit around the Sun and the resulting run of the seasons, the month by the Moon's movement around the Earth and the change of the Moon phases, the day by Earth's rotation and the succession of brightness and darkness. If high precision is required, however, the definition of time units appears to be problematic. Firstly, ambiguities arise for instance in the exact definition of a rotation or revolution. Secondly, some of the basic astronomical processes turn out to be uneven and irregular. A problem known for thousands of years is the non-commensurability of year, month, and day. Neither can the year be precisely expressed as an integer number of months or days, nor does a month contain an integer number of days. To solves these problems, a multitude of time scales and calenders were devised of which the most important will be described below. Siderial Time The siderial time is deduced from the revolution of the Earth with respect to the distant stars and can therefore be determined from nightly observations of the starry sky. -
Chapter 6 Nautical Publications
CHAPTER 6 NAUTICAL PUBLICATIONS INTRODUCTION 600. Publications supply a ship’s chart and publication library. On-line publications produced by the U.S. government are The navigator uses many textual information sources available on the Web. to plan and conduct a voyage. These sources include notices to mariners, summary of corrections, sailing directions, 601. Maintenance and Carriage Requirements of light lists, tide tables, sight reduction tables, and almanacs. Navigation Publications While it is still possible to obtain hard-copy or printed nautical publications, increasingly these texts Vessels may maintain the navigation publications are found online or in other digital formats, including required by Title 33 of the Code of Federal Regulations Compact Disc-Read Only Memory (CD-ROM's) or Parts 161.4, 164.33, and 164.72 and SOLAS Chapter V Digital Versatile Disc (DVD's). Digital publications are Regulation 27 in electronic format provided that they are much less expensive than printed publications to repro- derived from the original source, are currently duce and distribute, and online publications have no corrected/up-to-date, and are readily accessible on the reproduction costs at all for the producer, and only mi- vessel's bridge by the crew. Adequate independent back-up nor costs to the user. Also, one DVD can hold entire arrangements shall be provided in case of libraries of information, making both distribution and electronic/technical failure. Such arrangements include: a on-board storage much easier. The advantages of electronic publications over second computer, CD, or portable mass storage device hard-copy go beyond cost savings. They can be updated readily displayable to the navigation watch, or printed easier and more often, making it possible for mariners paper copies. -
Swiss Ephemeris: an Accurate Ephemeris Toolset for Astronomy and Astrology
NOTICES Swiss Ephemeris: An Accurate Ephemeris Toolset for Astronomy and Astrology Victor Reijs Independent scholar [email protected] Ralf Stubner Independent scholar [email protected] Introduction The Swiss Ephemeris is a highly accurate ephemeris toolset developed since 1997 by Astrodienst (Koch and Triendl 2004). It is based upon the DE430/DE431 ephemerides from NASA’s JPL (Folkner et al. 2014) and covers the time range 13,000 BC to AD 17,000. For both astronomical and astrological coordinates (true equinox of date), all corrections such as relativistic aberration, deflection of light in the gravity field of the Sun and others have been included. The Swiss Ephemeris is not a product that can be easily used by end users, but it is an accurate and fast toolset for programmers to build into their own astronomical or astrological software. A few examples where this toolset is used include the swephR package for the R environment (Stubner and Reijs 2019) and ARCHAEOCOSMO, which is used within both Excel and R (Reijs 2006). All discussed packages have open source versions. To provide flexibility (mainly in processing and memory needs), Swiss Ephemeris can use three ephemerides, giving the user the choice of which to use. First there are the original JPL ephemerides data files. These data files need a lot of memory (around 3 GB) and provide the most accurate ephemeris at this moment. The second (and default) SE ephemeris uses Astrodienst’s data files. Astrodienst used sophisticated compres- sion techniques to reduce the original DE430/DE431 data files to around 100 MB. -
San Jose Astronomical Association Membership Form P.O
SJAA EPHEMERIS SJAA Activities Calendar May General Meeting Jim Van Nuland Dr. Jeffrey Cuzzi May 26 at 8 p.m. @ Houge Park late April David Smith 20 Houge Park Astro Day. Sunset 7:47 p.m., 20% moon sets 0:20 a.m. Star party hours: 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. At our May 26 General Meeting the title of the talk will be: 21 Mirror-making workshop at Houge Park. 7:30 p.m. What Have We Learned from the Cassini/Huygens Mission to 28 General meeting at Houge Park. Karrie Gilbert will Saturn? – a presentation by Dr. Jeffrey Cuzzi of NASA Ames speak on Studies of Andromeda Galaxy Halo Stars. 8 Research Center. p.m. May Cassini is now well into its third year at Saturn. The Huygens 5 Mirror-making workshop at Houge Park. 7:30 p.m. entry probe landed on Titan in January 2005, but since then, 11 Astronomy Class at Houge Park. 7:30 p.m. many new discoveries have been made on Titan’s surface, and 11 Houge Park star party. Sunset 8:06 p.m., 27% moon elsewhere in the system, by the orbiter as it continues its four- rise 3:23 a.m. Star party hours: 9:00 to midnight. year tour. In addition, new understanding is emerging from 12 Dark sky weekend. Sunset 8:07 p.m., 17% moon rise analysis of the earliest obtained data. 3:50 a.m. In this talk, Dr. Jeffrey Cuzzi will review the key science highlights 17 Mirror-making workshop at Houge Park. -
6.- Methods for Latitude and Longitude Measurement
Chapter 6 Copyright © 1997-2004 Henning Umland All Rights Reserved Methods for Latitude and Longitude Measurement Latitude by Polaris The observed altitude of a star being vertically above the geographic north pole would be numerically equal to the latitude of the observer ( Fig. 6-1 ). This is nearly the case with the pole star (Polaris). However, since there is a measurable angular distance between Polaris and the polar axis of the earth (presently ca. 1°), the altitude of Polaris is a function of the local hour angle. The altitude of Polaris is also affected by nutation. To obtain the accurate latitude, several corrections have to be applied: = − ° + + + Lat Ho 1 a0 a1 a2 The corrections a0, a1, and a2 depend on LHA Aries , the observer's estimated latitude, and the number of the month. They are given in the Polaris Tables of the Nautical Almanac [12]. To extract the data, the observer has to know his approximate position and the approximate time. When using a computer almanac instead of the N. A., we can calculate Lat with the following simple procedure. Lat E is our estimated latitude, Dec is the declination of Polaris, and t is the meridian angle of Polaris (calculated from GHA and our estimated longitude). Hc is the computed altitude, Ho is the observed altitude (see chapter 4). = ( ⋅ + ⋅ ⋅ ) Hc arcsin sin Lat E sin Dec cos Lat E cos Dec cos t ∆ H = Ho − Hc Adding the altitude difference, ∆H, to the estimated latitude, we obtain the improved latitude: ≈ + ∆ Lat Lat E H The error of Lat is smaller than 0.1' when Lat E is smaller than 70° and when the error of Lat E is smaller than 2°, provided the exact longitude is known. -
Signal in Space Error and Ephemeris Validity Time Evaluation of Milena and Doresa Galileo Satellites †
sensors Article Signal in Space Error and Ephemeris Validity Time Evaluation of Milena and Doresa Galileo Satellites † Umberto Robustelli * , Guido Benassai and Giovanni Pugliano Department of Engineering, Parthenope University of Naples, 80143 Napoli, Italy; [email protected] (G.B.); [email protected] (G.P.) * Correspondence: [email protected] † This paper is an extended version of our paper published in the 2018 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for the Sea proceedings entitled “Accuracy evaluation of Doresa and Milena Galileo satellites broadcast ephemeris”. Received: 14 March 2019; Accepted: 11 April 2019; Published: 14 April 2019 Abstract: In August 2016, Milena (E14) and Doresa (E18) satellites started to broadcast ephemeris in navigation message for testing purposes. If these satellites could be used, an improvement in the position accuracy would be achieved. A small error in the ephemeris would impact the accuracy of positioning up to ±2.5 m, thus orbit error must be assessed. The ephemeris quality was evaluated by calculating the SISEorbit (in orbit Signal In Space Error) using six different ephemeris validity time thresholds (14,400 s, 10,800 s, 7200 s, 3600 s, 1800 s, and 900 s). Two different periods of 2018 were analyzed by using IGS products: DOYs 52–71 and DOYs 172–191. For the first period, two different types of ephemeris were used: those received in IGS YEL2 station and the BRDM ones. Milena (E14) and Doresa (E18) satellites show a higher SISEorbit than the others. If validity time is reduced, the SISEorbit RMS of Milena (E14) and Doresa (E18) greatly decreases differently from the other satellites, for which the improvement, although present, is small. -
Thenauticalalmanac.Com the Nautical Almanac 2023 for The
The Nautical Almanac 2023 For the Sun TheNauticalAlmanac.com Contents Credits, Acknowledgment and Disclaimer p. 3 Useful Links p. 4 Formulas p. 5 - 7 Equation of Time curve p. 8 The Daily Pages for the Sun p. 9 - 21 Increments & Corrections (The Yellow Pages) p. 22 - 41 Conversion of Arc to Time p. 42 Altitude Corrections for Sun, Planets, Stars (includes Refraction and Dip) p. 43 - 44 USNO Navigational Star Chart p. 45 Sun TOCC.odt Acknowledgment and Credits Dr. Enno Rodegerdts The Nautical Almanac Daily Pages and Sun Almanacs found on our site were originally created from PyAlmanac written by the great Norwegian sailor Enno Rodegerdts. PyAlmanac used PyEphem to generate the almanacs and LaTex provided the final formatting. Visit Dr. Rodegerdts site and learn of his voyages at https://sv-inua.net/ Without his work TheNauticalAlmanac.com wouldn't exist. Andrew Bauer Mr. Bauer has taken the initial work of Dr. Rodegerdts and improved it to the excellence found in the following Daily Pages. Attending foremost to the accuracy of data and then formatting Mr. Bauer created SkyAlmanac which draws from Brandon Rhodes work Ephem and Skyfieldand provides a clear arrangement of figures required for celestial navigation. To that end his work was determined, tireless and efficient. In our mutual writing across many lines of longitude he has always been pleasant, friendly and most affable. As he has said, "The art of celestial navigation should be promoted, not discouraged, even in the modern day". To both of these men we all owe a large debt of gratitude and thanks Disclaimer and Warning Prior to use verify the accuracy of The Nautical Almanac or data you download from our site.