Celestial Navigation: How to find the azimuth of a star

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----------ABOUT THE VIDEO----------

This video was originally uploaded to our other channel, Casual Navigation, back in 2018.

How do you use a nautical almanac to find the azimuth of a star?

We walk through the entire manual calculation for finding the azimuth of a star. This is one of the fundamental steps of celestial navigation, and is the first building block towards being able to plot your position using the stars.

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[harbourdogNL]

I'm going to keep coming back to this video until I understand it!

[АннаДонец-жю]

I was wandering, why you changed the values from calculating the azimuth of a star. Then I tried it myself and figured that it would give you a negative value of altitude :) BTW big fan of yours. You are doing great job. Keep it up!

[GraemeRatten]

I couldn't make the formula at 10:13 work, so after much research elsewhere I am now using this which does work (for me!) Az=1/(C x cos(LAT)), followed by inverse tan. I'm a big fan by the way!! (also as mentioned by others, the LAT at 8:14 is shown incorrectly in the slide (had me going for a while too!)

[BobbieGWhiz]

Seems like the Selected Stars volume of the Air Almanac would be infinitely easier. You would also be given your Hc and would be well on the way to having an intercept.

[rdhunkins]

Are there calculators that take trig functions using degrees and minutes? All the ones I have ever used require radians, so converting minutes to decimal degrees, adding those to the degrees, multiplying by pi, dividing by 180 is a lot of work. Especially on a small boat pitching in the waves in the North Atlantic. Don’t know how they did it back in the day. I’m sure there was vomitus on a lot of the midshipman’s workings. 😉

[robinj.]

The old time "Navigators", way before the age of LORAN, let alone GPS, always used a hand berring compass to get as close an azimuth as possible on every body they we are going to use for a sight!

[christophedevos]

How does one calculate the azimuth with a longitude east? I'm trying to figure this out, but I'm lost in the B and C step of the method. Any suggestions?

[mikegordonbrasov]

¿Any idea how to locate the first aries point from any place you are on earth? Is for the purpose of practicing. Maybe some DIY clinometer gadget, that help me to locate where is the vernal point, and after that, finding a star by it´s declination and AR?
Or maybe a simpler method? By the way, i like your tutorials, they are very good!

[brettjones]

@8:14 you have tan (lat) = tan (043 35.9') shouldn't that be tan (27 10.2')? You plugged in the incorrect figure there. I do like the layout.
I am trying to get the bearing of a star from my location .

[josephlai]

At 9.51 you gave the formula of Azimuth as inverse of Tan of 1/C/Cos Lat. Is there an error here? Shouldn't it be 1/(C X Cos Lat)??

[BobbieGWhiz]

I assume this is good as an academic exercise, but why can’t you just go outside and note the azimuth of the star. It’ll change by 15 degrees an hour and be 1 degree further west each night. So you can get a very good approximation of its location throughout the night and day by day. I’m just an armchair navigator/sailor, so perhaps I’m missing the relevance of this exercise.

[brianleake]

The solution for A appears to be wrong.Did you mix degrees and radians?Im confused.Can you help me please?

[pedromoreno]

isn´t The time zone -2, or why do you set -3?

[gabrielorapa]

Uhhmm can someone explain whre did the longitude come from, i thought gha and longitude are the same?

[BobbieGWhiz]

I thought Zulu time and UTC were the same.

[JomondChannel]

The horizon the not curved or the tools used could not be calibrated because every tool used is calibrated to level horizon as by the manufacturer.

What a trash start to what I hoped was going to be a good video.

[craigwin]

You use the increment page for simple math calculations and then you use a calculator for complex calculations which 95% of the viewers have no idea how to formulate but which are shown specifically and easily in that atlas. Poor instruction.