How a Sextant Works There's nothing mystical or complicated about a sextant. All it is is a device that measures the angle between two objects. The sextant makes use of two mirrors.

There's no way around it: Celestial navigation using a sextant is a complex and involved process that involves a fair amount of calculating, correcting, referring to tables, knowledge of the ...

To navigate the ocean, a person plots sextant measurements on charts and tables and uses a nautical almanac to apply the data.

Just as staying proficient at flying an airplane takes practice and just as staying on top of using a sextant takes regular use, becoming proficient and staying proficient at dead reckoning ...

And so service men and women are being taught the absolute basics, going back to using the planets and stars and a sextant to find direction through a long series of mathematical calculations.

Chronicles the author's first transatlantic voyage, when he learned to navigate using a sextant, and traces how this indispensible navigational tool was used by daring mariners to explore and map the ...

If he arrived there the day you say, the altitude of the sun, determined by using his sextant, would show, by reference to the figures for latitude in the Nautical Almanac, that he was at 90 ...

Question: How do transport-category jets navigate the North Atlantic? Gone are the days of navigating with a sextant. Until the early 1980s, my former airline actually utilized a sextant viewing ...