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Table of Contents |
The Role of the Noon Sight
While John Harrison developed a viable marine chronometer in 1759, for the next hundred years or so a chronometer could cost as much as the rest of the ship combined. Consequently, the
noon sight — which does not require an accurate clock to execute — remained hugely popular. Even into the 20th century, getting accurate time at sea was something of a challenge,
particularly for small boat sailors.
Sextants were perfected around 1920 with the development of the drum-micrometer instrument. But there were other pieces that needed to come into play before the St.
Hilaire method — published in 1885 — could reach its potential. Ever-more-accurate annual editions of the Nautical Almanac appeared, taking advantage of the post-WW2 growth in the power of computers. AT&T's Bell Labs built the world's first transistor in 1947. In 1953, the "inspection table" we
use for sight reduction, Pub. 249, was first published. Also in 1953, Sony bought a license for $25,000 from AT&T to manufacture transistors. Within 5 years, Sony went from being a company with 7 employees to one with 500...and had begun selling what eventually became millions of transistor radios. In 1966, radio station WWV began broadcasting shortwave time signals around the world from Fort Collins, Colorado. Seiko released the first quartz wristwatch in 1969. Before 10 more years had passed, Texaco service stations were selling quartz watches for $10 with a tank of gas. Between them, Sony, WWV, the post-war computing boom, and Seiko ushered in the modern era of celestial navigation. In a way that seems rather foreign to us today, this was a period when any
vessel that sailed out of the sight of land had a sextant on board, and somebody who knew how to use
it. And even the captain of a 27 foot yacht (if he hadn't yet bought his quartz wristwatch) could tune into WWV twice a day to
calibrate his on-board timepiece. The 70's and 80's became something of a golden age for celestial navigation as the St. Hilaire method of sight reduction
finally came into its own.
In 1972, there were 654 active ships in the U.S. Navy. This probably means the Navy had at least two and a half thousand active celestial navigators at any one time. So the editors
of the 1977 edition of Bowditch had an enormous resevoir of talent to draw on — both trainers and do-ers — as it sought to present "best practices" in celestial navigation. Here is what
they said about the noon sight (p. 560): As accurate time became available at sea, and then more convenient tables and more accurate almanacs appeared, the noon sight lost its importance. Since the modern inspection
table has been available, the use of meridian altitudes has decreased rapidly, and reduction to the meridian has all but disappeared.
The solution of a meridian altitude is simple and quick, but this is more than offset by:
The practice of observing a body when a line of position is desired, and solving those which happen to have a meridian angle of 0° or 180° in the same manner as
other observations, is a growing practice that eliminates the need for remembering a separate procedure for bodies on the celestial meridian.
The modern navigator
thinks primarily in terms of lines of position, rather than of latitude and longitude observations. Frank Reed is the moderator of NavList — the web "home" of many people with a passion for celestial navigation. He indicates
here (retrieved 2018 Feb. 15) that our understanding about what was
considered "best practices" are correct.
...In the late 20th century, navigators were taught that Noon Sun sights were pointless.... there's nothing useful in a Noon Sun sight. It's just another sight, they were taught. They all yield lines of position. So ignore the noon sight! Frank has a continuing passion for the noon sight. But the history of how celestial navigation was instructed in the 20th century is clear. In 1995, the GPS system became fully operational...and the number of celestial navigators in the world immediately began to plummet.
In our own century, when celestial navigation is more a
hobby than a necessity, noon and Polaris sights seem to have made a sort of comeback.
Oddly enough, in the Sail Canada celestial exam, 29% of the exam's points are related to noon and Polaris sights. Whether Sail Canada has tapped into the 21st century nostalgia for pre-modern celestial navigation, or whether they were simply passed by when the best practices
of the modern era became current is difficult to say. It is certainly true that if you have an accurate timepiece aboard, and if you are willing to spend 30 minutes before your estimated local apparent noon (LAN) taking sextant
shots, and continue shooting for 30 minutes after LAN, you can plot your shots on graph paper and get a pretty accurate idea of when LAN occurred. From this, you can come up with a fairly good idea of
your longitude, to go along with your latitude.
In this course, however, I have chosen to adopt the primary celestial strategy that was used by working navigators from
1966-95. My reasons for this are not just rooted in navigational history, but are practical and personal.
I can take a sun shot, enter data in the worksheet and plot an
LOP in 13 minutes: less than a quarter the time required for a noon shot.
If for no other reason than to reduce the risk of seasickness by reducing the amount of time I spend staring through my sextant's telescope, I prefer the St. Hilaire method
even if I am taking my shots right at LAN. And besides, who wants to be taking yet more time for sextant sights when there are clouds, dolphins, and flying fish to be watched? Noon and Polaris sights are terrific in an emergency setting, when you have no idea of UT. But for routine celestial navigation, using Pub. 249 to
develop an LOP is the more powerful and versatile navigational tool. John Karl has written an interesting book, The use of the special sights discussed in Chapter 7 (e.g. Polaris, noon) depends on the navigator's objective.
Broader experience...and satisfaction can be gained from learning and practicing special sights.
But if the only interest is a reliable and simple backup (to the GPS) system, it might be
reasonable to forget about special sights. Particularly as a backup system for the part-time navigator, the advantage of having good proficiency in one method might trump
the advantages of these additional sights. These special sights have lost their importance from the days when accurate sight timing was difficult....now they offer little advantage....
I think there has been an
irrelevant historical carryover on the importance of determining latitude rather than a regular LOP. After all, a known latitude
is just an east-west LOP. And if a sun shot is taken anywhere near local apparent noon,
without regard to how near, and worked up as a regular St. Hilaire sight, the LOP will be nearly east-west anyhow. And that's the real
consideration, the LOP crossing angle at noon relative to the morning and afternoon sun lines, used for running fixes. |