Lunar Distance (navigation)
In celestial navigation, lunar distance is the angle between the Moon and another celestial body. A navigator can use a lunar distance (also called a lunar) and a nautical almanac to calculate Greenwich time. The navigator can then determine longitude without a marine chronometer.
Read more about Lunar Distance (navigation): The Reason For Measuring Lunar Distances, Errors, USS Peacock, In Literature
Famous quotes containing the words lunar and/or distance:
“A bird half wakened in the lunar noon
Sang halfway through its little inborn tune.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning—an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)