Piloting with Celestial Algorithms

Abstract

This paper shows how coastal piloting observations can be cast in a form that allows them to be reduced using a celestial navigation algorithm. This is useful when navigating with a computer that can compute a position fix from celestial observations, but is not explicitly designed to handle coastal piloting. It is also a useful technique for incorporating piloting into a computer program without programming piloting and celestial techniques separately. We treat three cases: a range to a known object, a bearing to a known object, and a horizontal angle measured between two known objects.