·        Thank you for using celestial navigator.

·        This App is designed specially to help navigators at sea. This app includes various on-board activities starting from eta calculation to sights, rise-set and sailings.

·        The welcome screen will show your present position, heading, sunset and sunrise. The app uses the inbuilt GPS receiver and magnetic compass sensor of your device to display the desired results. This app will work offline without any problems at all.

DATA INPUT

·        Please enter latitude in format DDMMM, longitude in DDDMMM and sextant altitude corrected for Index Error. in format DDDMMM i.e. without using decimal points.

·        Do not enter degrees, minutes or decimal symbols.
         For example if you want to enter latitude 55 degrees 45.678 minutes enter as 5545678.
           If you want to enter longitude 120 degrees 55.678 minutes enter as 12055678.
           If you want to enter latitude 5 degrees 10.678 minutes enter as 0510678.
           If you want to enter longitude 5 degrees 10.678 minutes enter as 00510678 and so on.
           The sextant altitudes (corrected for index error) must be entered the same way as longitudes.

APP PERMISSIONS

·  The permission of the app has been revised to include access to the SD card. Following up the request of an user the app can now export the calculated data and save them on the SD card and that is why the permission to access the SD card is required.

·  Even if the permission is not granted the app will run fine and only the export option won’t work.

           

GENERAL UI HELP

·  DONE button (tick) does calculation.

·  DELETE button clears the forms.

·  EXPORT button exports results to an excel file.

·  Swipe from left to right to open the navigation menu or click on the app icon on the upper left corner.

NAVIGATION MENU

LOP AND COMPASSERROR CALCULATION

·  Calculates celestial line of position which includes intercept, longitude by chronometer and latitude by meridian altitude depending upon the selected method.

·  Date: UTC date in format DD/MM/YYYY. Click on date to select the date.

·  UTC: UTC time in format HH: MM: SS. Click on UTC to select the UTC.

·  DRLAT: DR latitude used in observation in format DDMM.M.

·  DRLONG: DR longitude used in observation in format DDDMM.M

·  Hs: Altitude of the celestial body as measured off the sextant. (corrected for Index error)

·  ObsZn: Azimuth of the body as read of the compass.  °G - Gyro Azimuth and °C - Magnetic Compass Azimuth

Calculated values-
        Ho: True altitude obtained after applying corrections to Hs.
        Hc: Calculated altitude of the celestial body.
        DEC: Declination of the celestial body.
        GHA: Greenwich Hour Angle Of the celestial body.
        LHA: Local Hour Angle Of the celestial body.
        SHA: Sidereal Hour Angle Of the celestial body.
        Zn: Azimuth.

        Bf: Fix Latitude.
        Le: Observed Longitude.
        Zn(ObsLong): Azimuth calculated using Le.
        Varn: Magnetic Variation. Check auto to calculate automatically or input manually.
       
        The magnetic variation is calculated using the world magnetic model and is valid till 2015. Future versions of Android may use a newer version of the model. It should be accurate for compass error calculation. Select export to save the sight results to the SD card in folder celestial navigator/sights.
      

ETA CALCULATION 

·        Distance:  Distance to go

·        DepTz:  Departure Time Zone

·        ArrTz:  Arrival Time Zone

·        Speed:  Speed of the vessel (input or as selected as default) in Knots

·        Date: Departure Date

·        Click on date to select the date and local time of departure.

CELESTIAL FIX CALCULATION 

·        Press DR and set up the DR position, time, course and speed. Date format is DDMMYYYY and time format is in 24Hrs (HH:MM:SS).

·        Touch LAST for last known position. Press the buttons N and E to change to S and W respectively.

·        Press DONE to register the DR position, course and speed.       Based on this the program does running fix and calculates the DR at the time of the fix.

·        To add sights, touch on the ADD button. Select the observed body. Enter Date in DDMMYYYY format and Time in HHMMSS format without any symbols. By default, the DR date and DR hour will be fed in from the DR time. In the Hs section enter sextant altitude corrected for index error. Enter in the first field degrees and in the second the minutes. Enter height of eye in HOE section. Enter air temperature in TEMP and air pressure in PRESS section.

·        Touch X to remove the observation.

·         After feeding in the sights select DONE button to calculate the fix position which is displayed just below the DR.

·        The app will plot the observations at the bottom section. To view the full screen plot, click on plot view button. Select export to save the Fix results to the SD card in folder celestial navigator/Cel Fixes.

DAILY PAGES
       Pick date or set date. Input latitude and longitude or select Last Known to get the last known location. Select the body from the list and click on tick button to generate almanac. It displays GHA,DEC and calculated altitude at 1 hour interval from 0000 to 2300 hrs.
      

RISE SET CALCULATION       

·        Date :  date/month/year 

·        LAT : Latitude of the location

·        LONG : Longitude of the location.

·        Click LASTKNOWN to get Last Known Position.

·        TIMEZONE : East (ahead of UTC) is positive zone, West (behind UTC) is negative zone.

·        Click on date to select the date or fill up manually.

·        Select export to save the almanac data to the SD card in folder celestial navigator/Almanac.

·         

WIND CALCULATOR
         

·        Head: Ships head

·        VslSpd: Ships speed

·        RWDirn: Relative wind direction, enter positive value for starboard side and negative value for port side.

·        RWSpd: Relative wind speed.

·        To calculate the dew point and relative humidity of the air select the temperature unit. C is for Celsius and F is for Fahrenheit. Enter dry air and wet air temperatures.

·        The app will calculate true wind speed, direction, wind force in Beaufort wind scale, relative humidity and dew point.

SAILINGS MENU

·        Gives Mercator and great circle course and distance between two positions. It also calculates the great circle intermediate waypoints starting from the longitude and at regular intervals as specified by the user.

·        Please note that if left blank the program assumes starting long=180W and interval=5 deg.

·        When Mercator sailing track is selected.
To calculate the connecting position fill in any one of the two sections (CONN LAT OR CONN LONG).

·        If the latitude is filled the program will calculate the connecting longitude and vice versa.

·        If none of the sections are filled the program calculates the connecting longitude at the equator.

·        When Great Circle sailing track is selected the program calculates the connecting latitude from the longitude as specified by the user.

STAR FINDER
         

·        Click on the UTC button to set date and time.

·        Enter latitude and longitude in the same format as described above. For example - to enter latitude 25 degrees 36.5 minutes enter 2536.5. To enter longitude 125 degrees 36.5 minutes enter 12536.5.

·        Click on N and S buttons to switch hemispheres. Press on calculate to show the sky view. Click on the star to display its name, azimuth and altitude.

RISE SET AND PHASE WIDGET
       Click on refresh button to get the position from GPS and calculate sunrise, sunset, moon rise, moon set and moon phase.
       The current moon phase is shown on the top left.

       
FEW WORDS ON ACCURACY
         

·        The calculation of connecting longitude is more reliable and accurate than that of connecting latitude in Mercator sailing.

·        The accuracy of this program has been tested with US Navy Data services and it matches closely. Use at your own risk.

CREDITS

·        Thanks to Ms. Priyatam for her extensive love and support.

·       Thanks to Lakshman Singh, Parminder Hundal, Smit Agarwal, Karan Thapa, Ashish Sachdeva and Jatan Bhatawadekar (Chief Navigating Officers) for support and extensive testing of the app.

·        Special thanks to CAPTAIN IAN ENGELBRECHT of WORLWIDE YACHT DELIVERIES for extensive testing and feedback.

·        Thanks to Mr. Ben. Kindly check the great website for more info and tutorials on celestial navigation:

https://reloadyourgear.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-celestial-navigation/

Report bugs and feedback- marnav.pro@gmail.com