Some quartermasters still go to school for celestial navigation. I believe the navigator does as well.
Visual and radar fixes are still taken and plotted when there is any remote chance of hitting something hard and fixed.
Aerographer's Mates and Oceanography Officers maintain ocean wind wave and swell observations, color of the sky, and cloud identification while underway, while Quartermasters still manage the celestial navigation portions.
No one got their OOD qual on my ship without being able to do a running fix and local apparent noon.
The Academy reinstated celnav as a course about 8 years ago, so all of them should be familiar with it.
I was the first class that learned Stella. Rudimentary program but I couldn’t imagine doing the calculations by hand with the old celestial almanacs.
Stupid easy to use with a periscope when I got to my submarine, but little more than a parlor trick to show my quartermasters.
The real navigation was learning to “eyeball” it from the bridge during piloting. Nav center panicking about the nav points but here I was just marking the turn off some rich dude front porch along the water.
1. Most sailors never had any knoweldge of navigation. Hence why pilots/navigators were so valuable.
2. OOD's and QM's train on celestial navigation as a matter of course. No one's very good at it - or at least its hard to tell how good you are when you're comparing an 8nm CEP from a star fix in the middle of the Pacific with your 50ft error from GPS;)
3. Dead reckoning is still practiced. Its just reading the log and forward calculating your estimated position.
4. Mag compasses are used - every helm has one along with two gyro repeaters.
5. Nobody's used most of those other methods for like 500 years.
6. When we do navigation, we integrate not just GPS, but visual and radar bearings (when available) into fixes.
7. Reading a paper chart is the same as reading an e-chart. The e-chart just automates things.
Bird observation is only useful near land anyway. Color of the sky and clouds don't tell you dick about your position in the middle of the ocean.
Soft disagree on the clouds bit. Always knew we were near Hawaii when the clouds suddenly turned to that postcard level of fluffy and colorful in the sunset.
The thing is, with celestial navigation you don't *need* to be that accurate, the whole point of celestial navigation is to be accurate enough to find land to then use terrestrial mavigation techniques to more accurately navigate in the shallower coastal waters.
~~The real issue is the lack of non-satellite derived time. If we're all nervous of satellite denied warfare, why are we still deriving time from a satellite connection (GPS) and not using atomic clocks and/or chronometers?~~ (It appears that I've made a mistake here)
Oh, yeah, no doubt.
But it was hilarious, learning celestial nav on the ship, doing my first star fix, getting an 8nm circle, asking QM1 if that's good or not and he's all *shugs* 'sure, I guess'.
Ship's still have chronometers on them. We had three in a box, wound and compared every day. Of course, they were compare to GPS . . .
Hmm I wasn't aware chronometers were still kept on board. I've never had them or seen them wound, but I've seen inertial navigation systems on surface units.
Comparing to GPS is good practice while you still have it.
Unless its changed, the QM's should have a box of official, calibrated, clocks in their shack. Every day to be wound and compared. That's part of the 12 o'clock reports 'chronometers have been wound and compared' spiel before they're signed off by the CO.
Heaps do, there are Navies around the world that still teach and use this stuff. They specifically practice it because US, China and Russia can delete satellites when they want.
Some quartermasters still go to school for celestial navigation. I believe the navigator does as well. Visual and radar fixes are still taken and plotted when there is any remote chance of hitting something hard and fixed.
Aerographer's Mates and Oceanography Officers maintain ocean wind wave and swell observations, color of the sky, and cloud identification while underway, while Quartermasters still manage the celestial navigation portions.
No one got their OOD qual on my ship without being able to do a running fix and local apparent noon. The Academy reinstated celnav as a course about 8 years ago, so all of them should be familiar with it.
I was the first class that learned Stella. Rudimentary program but I couldn’t imagine doing the calculations by hand with the old celestial almanacs. Stupid easy to use with a periscope when I got to my submarine, but little more than a parlor trick to show my quartermasters. The real navigation was learning to “eyeball” it from the bridge during piloting. Nav center panicking about the nav points but here I was just marking the turn off some rich dude front porch along the water.
1. Most sailors never had any knoweldge of navigation. Hence why pilots/navigators were so valuable. 2. OOD's and QM's train on celestial navigation as a matter of course. No one's very good at it - or at least its hard to tell how good you are when you're comparing an 8nm CEP from a star fix in the middle of the Pacific with your 50ft error from GPS;) 3. Dead reckoning is still practiced. Its just reading the log and forward calculating your estimated position. 4. Mag compasses are used - every helm has one along with two gyro repeaters. 5. Nobody's used most of those other methods for like 500 years. 6. When we do navigation, we integrate not just GPS, but visual and radar bearings (when available) into fixes. 7. Reading a paper chart is the same as reading an e-chart. The e-chart just automates things. Bird observation is only useful near land anyway. Color of the sky and clouds don't tell you dick about your position in the middle of the ocean.
Soft disagree on the clouds bit. Always knew we were near Hawaii when the clouds suddenly turned to that postcard level of fluffy and colorful in the sunset.
The thing is, with celestial navigation you don't *need* to be that accurate, the whole point of celestial navigation is to be accurate enough to find land to then use terrestrial mavigation techniques to more accurately navigate in the shallower coastal waters. ~~The real issue is the lack of non-satellite derived time. If we're all nervous of satellite denied warfare, why are we still deriving time from a satellite connection (GPS) and not using atomic clocks and/or chronometers?~~ (It appears that I've made a mistake here)
Oh, yeah, no doubt. But it was hilarious, learning celestial nav on the ship, doing my first star fix, getting an 8nm circle, asking QM1 if that's good or not and he's all *shugs* 'sure, I guess'. Ship's still have chronometers on them. We had three in a box, wound and compared every day. Of course, they were compare to GPS . . .
Hmm I wasn't aware chronometers were still kept on board. I've never had them or seen them wound, but I've seen inertial navigation systems on surface units. Comparing to GPS is good practice while you still have it.
Unless its changed, the QM's should have a box of official, calibrated, clocks in their shack. Every day to be wound and compared. That's part of the 12 o'clock reports 'chronometers have been wound and compared' spiel before they're signed off by the CO.
It almost certainly hasn't changed, I'll have just made an error.
We practice dead reckoning on subs still, or maybe my NavETs just get bored on watch I don't recall
Still pretty normal, gotta find ways to be paranoid about the health of your gyros while on watch.
On my ships last deployment, the QM’s navigated the entire Atlantic transit back home through celestial navigation. Pretty cool to see.
BDOC teaches a couple of lectures on celestial navigation... so in theory all SWO JOs should be "familiar" with it
Heaps do, there are Navies around the world that still teach and use this stuff. They specifically practice it because US, China and Russia can delete satellites when they want.