ASA 107, Celestial Navigation Learn practical celestial navigation and other aspects of safe ocean navigation. No previous navigation experience is required — the only math involved is arithmetic.
NEW! - Thanks to a recent partnership between American Sailing and the StarPath School of Navigation, ECSS students are now eligible to earn ASA 107 certification by successfully completing an ASA-approved interactive online course offered by StarPath. A special code is required, please contact us for more information.
Prerequisites:
ASA 105, Coastal Navigation
Course objectives include:
- Convert longitude into time
- Convert standard time and zone time to GMT and vice versa
- Calculate the zone time, given longitude
- Calculate the chronometer (or watch) given a previous error and the daily rate
- Apply the corrections for index error, dip of the horizon, and total correction to convert sextant altitudes of the sun, stars, planets, and moon to true altitudes
- Calculate the time of meridian passage of the sun and calculate the boat's latitude from the observed meridian altitude of the sun
- Determine the latitude at twilight by means of the Pole Star
- Solve the navigational triangle using a navigation table and show all appropriate work
- Plot celestial lines of position on a Mercator projection or on a universal plotting sheet
- Calculate the times (ship’s and GMT) of sunrise, sunset and twilight
- Determine the approximate azimuths and altitudes of the navigational stars and planets at twilight
- Calculate and plot the lines of position obtained from observations of several celestial bodies at twilight and thus find the boat’s position
- Advance the LOP obtained from a sun sight to another LOP obtained from the sun at a later time and find the boat’s position using a running fix (sun-run-sun)
- Calculate the true bearing of a low altitude celestial body in order to determine the error and deviation of the compass
