Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T11:53:09.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘The Metrication of Navigation’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

D. H. Sadler
Affiliation:
(Superintendent, H.M. Nautical Almanac Office)
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In his note (Journal 21, 81) on this subject, Ronald Turner says ‘No longer will orbital periods of the rotation of the Earth on its axis be measures of time’. This is not so, either in general or in the particular, case of navigation.

Universal Time (U.T.), which is the generally accepted name for Greenwich Mean Time (G.M.T.), continues to be essential for all purposes (in astronomy, geodesy, surveying and navigation) for which are required astronomical observations related to the precise position of the observer on the Earth's surface. The Nautical Almanac must continue to tabulate the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars with G.M.T. as the time-argument; and observations should be timed in a time-system related to U.T., such as the broadcast time-signals of Coordinated Universal Time (U.T.C:).

Type
Forum
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1968