Use of the Air Almanac For Marine Navigation

This book is intended for readers who are either already familiar with celestial navigation or are planning to take up the subject, and want to learn about optional resources. This booklet does not teach celestial navigation, nor is it a copy of the Air Almanac.

There are marine navigators who prefer the Air Almanac over the Nautical Almanac. This booklet compares the two almanacs so others can make their choice as well.

The Sky Diagrams of the Air Almanac are an important resource for all navigators, but they can easily be overlooked by those who rely on the Nautical Almanac alone. With that in mind, we give these diagrams here a well deserved review and comparison with competing manual methods of predicting the best bodies to use for a round of sextant sights with an eye toward optimizing the accuracy of the resulting position fix. The right choice of bodies is crucial to the final accuracy.

For an introduction to or review of celestial navigation, see Celestial Navigation: A Complete Home Study Course.