STUDY ON THE METHOD OF DETERMINING SHIP’S POSITION BY SIMULTANEOUS OBSSERVATION TO SUN’S ALTITUDE AND AZIMUTH

Abstract

Determining ship’s position by simultaneous distance and azimuth observation to a terrestrial object is a simple method with high accuracy and applied in coastal navigation. In celestial navigation, azimuth observation to a body is quite complicated but not very precise. Only the azimuth to a sun can be simply measured with higher accuracy. Nowadays, the celestial method for ship’s position determination in daytime is non-simultaneous observation of sun’s altitudes. The result of this method is poorly accurate and it can only be done when the sun across the observer’s meridian and the time interval between azimuth measurements is also big. This paper suggests a new celestial method of simultaneous observation of sun’s altitude and azimuth. The proposed method can overcome the disadvantages of sun non-simultaneous observation method and determine the ship’s position in a short time in daytime as well as not much depends on the error of predicted position.