Company Navimatics Corp, located near Seattle, state of Washington, moved since October 2010 a complete application for celestial navigation. After iNA (*) from Global Marine Network, here comes Celestial for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Celestial performs celestial sight reductions, calculates astronomical fixes, presents it graphically, manages sights on multiple trips and assist in sight planning. It includes a complete Almanac of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars. All this for 20 EUR, half the price of annual Nautical Almanac, true happiness !
Celestial includes :
- The support of quick sight reduction
Once prompted all sights values (Date and Time, observed height, Lat / Long estimated, corrections, etc.) instantly calculate an intercept or confirm a manual sight reduction.
- A comprehensive trip manager.
Allows to manage sights taken during a trip. We can store a list of all sights made on several trips, to consult, to arrange or to delete.
- Sights management
Multiple sights can be grouped and averaged together to calculate a fix. Lines Of Position and fixes will be plotted on a virtual plotting sheet.
- Support running fixes.
Celestial takes into account the estimated position of each sight to run the Lines Of Position.
- A star finder and times of rising/set of celestial bodies are included. You can plan your sights in advance to be on deck just in time.
- Almanac of the Sun, Moon, planets, and 57 stars useful for navigation, Aries and Polaris, until year 2099.
- Context-sensitive help for each touch screen that show the use of each function (iPhone) or contextual help available on each page (iPad).
All sight reduction algorithms are referred from the procedures of the U.S. Nautical Almanac (USNO). The positions of celestial bodies are predicted by the software from the U.S. Naval Observatory.
Note that this application is mixed, therefore, as iNavX, one application to buy if you own an iPhone and iPad.
[Update 12/01/2011] Since 11 January, version 1.1.11006 available on the AppStore is in French, translated by myself.
Friends yachtmen, handle your sextant !
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(*) iNA – The Nautical Almanac on iPhone
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