Tables for Clearing the Lunar Distance by Bruce Stark 300 pages, 8.5 x 11, coil bound. includes complete instructions and workforms, shipping weight 4lbs $37.00   ...item# 1875

Clearing the Lunar Distance

Navigation historian Bruce Stark has devoted many years to perfecting this modern version of Lunar Distance tables. To our knowledge, there are no other versions of this type of table in print today, although tables of this type were indeed the mainstay of navigation up till about 1900. They can be used by navigators for practicing the old ways, or they can indeed be used to find your longitude today without GMT. Practice with "lunars" is certainly an aerobatic flight in the world of celestial navigation, but those who do it become the very best celestial navigators, in part because very precise sights are requried as well as careful analysis. Our article called Lunar Distance Example discusses the topic of how to find longitude and time from lunar distances. The Newsletter tells of a Lunar distance seminar which Bruce Stark presented at Starpath. You can see how 19th century navigators studied Lunars in our elibra publication of the 1851 edition of The American Practical Navigator, by Nathanial Bowditch. This electronic reproduction was made from an original edition made available to Starpath from Bruce Stark. Click here for a useful review of the Stark Tables. Written by Jan Kalivoda.